Cecil says: We joined ten or so people on a wet Monday afternoon for
this first taste of Chinese cinema on the big screen; a chance to have a bit of
an insight into a country we’ll be visiting before we know it, and a chance to
see just how much Mandarin I’ve learnt in the last 12 months…
Black Coal was labelled as a ‘policier’ film by the local
magazine Pariscope, so we figured this could be the kind of plot we could
follow in spite of any language issues. I’ll let Bea say how she got on with
the plot in the absence of Mandarin and limited French.
It’s a bit of a grim film, showing the rough side of urban
China, but it’s a gripping story and with the kind of plot we THINK we worked
out between us at the end. No spoilers here, though.
The ‘hero’ is a kind of Chinese version of McNulty (for
anyone who’s a fan of The Wire), a divorced cop who turns to drink and gets
himself shot in an early scene as he tries to arrest some young gangsters, but
who perseveres in trying to solve the mystery of the body parts that turned up
all over China hidden among coal trucks off the back of goods trains.
The plot centres around a dry cleaners, where a young woman
appears to be connected to virtually all the men who die through the film, and
a skating rink (significant also because half the bodies seemed to have ice
skates on them still…).
There’s lots of apparently gratuitous violence (police
slapping the face of suspects; murderers hacking victims to death – JUST off
camera, though); and a couple of sex scenes, the first of which is quite
disturbing and involves our hero’s soon-to-be ex; and the second a steamy
affair in a big wheel, which evoked memories of both The Third Man (no sex
there of course, though) and Titanic.
I enjoyed this film, though, and the two hours flew by, even
though I only recognised two or three lines of Mandarin and was alarmed at how
little Pinyin (or Roman alphabet) appears on Chinese streets.
One funny observation: whereas
in the UK we are often the only people to stay behind for the full credit roll
at the end, for this film the credits were all in Chinese script and we left
the room fairly quickly, but this Parisian audience stayed faithfully in its
seats as the credits rolled at the end. How different is the cinema-going habit
between Britain and France
***
Bea says: I like
detective films and books, and when Cecil suggested this one I thought I might
be able to manage despite having no Mandarin and limited French – and I was
right. Although I didn’t entirely follow
every twist and turn in the plot, I did get enough contextual and visual
information to combine with the bits of French subtitling I could read to work
out what was going on, and who the killer (or killers) might be.
The film is mostly set in northern China during the winter
of 2005, and everything is covered in snow – but not that magical Christmas
movie-type snow, this is the long, frozen haul of January or February when
everyone is cold and sick of it. Quite a
lot of the action takes place around bleak housing estates, back alleys, the
Chinese equivalent of cheap working men’s cafés in Britain, and run down shops,
railways lines and fairgrounds. As such,
it’s also an interesting insight into ordinary Chinese life – how people live
and work. It’s gritty, but recognisable,
and rather reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books actually.
Highly recommended for something different – particularly if
you are a Mandarin speaker or it is subtitled into a language you are confident
in!
***
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