45/32
A Chinese woman lives in silence for herself, celebrating the thriving Belle Epoque with song and dance. The female lead doesn’t have a single line of dialogue during the film. Have you ever bought a band’s album and found that instead of new material, it contains old B-sides, remixes, and a couple of new value-added tracks? Of course you have, if you’re over thirty-five. Jia Zhang-ken’s "Caught by the Waters" is in many ways just that. But in doing so, it makes a statement about her career and indeed the changing face of the world around her. Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) shares a romance with Guao Bin (Zhubin Li), but he moves on with Qiao Qiao. following her. She follows him through the years and across the country. But when she arrives at her destination, perhaps what she’s wanted isn’t for her. But in reality, the plot is irrelevant, because much of this has already been written and filmed over the years; it’s just been remade now. Cuts from the likes of “Unknown Pleasures” (2002), “Still Life” (2006) and “Mountains May Depart” (2015), if I remember correctly. This allows for a realistic depiction of the two leads over time and their uneven aging. The scenes are therefore different but very familiar, acting as a kind of retrospective of Jia’s work, in a more direct and better executed way than Takeshi Kitano attempted with “Takeshi’s” (2005). The problem with creating a film this way is that while it’s perfectly serviceable as a narrative film, using a pre-existing shoehorn makes this feel a bit awkward in terms of flow. It feels more like a series of vignettes than a well-structured piece. Having seen many of the films from which the shots are taken, it resembles the original script, so it doesn’t feel like one story, but rather multiple stories sticking together. But there are some nice coincidences that come to fruition, allowing Jia’s text messages on an old Nokia to become TikTok videos on the latest smartphone. Jia is very negative about technology. TikTok stardom serves more as a cheap advert than a means to real fame and fortune; and service robots can easily be confused with a simple query. Technology has played an interesting role in shaping the nature of human relationships, especially over the past twenty years. If you know Jia’s work, you’ll immediately see what’s going on here. But if you’re new to his work, this might feel like a slightly odd film that doesn’t quite tie together nicely enough. Some scenes don’t quite seem to fit; more has been added as they became available. So this might require some background work from the uninitiated, and it’s one more for long-time fans. Although they might feel like they’re watching "Still Life" again. Has life moved on in the last eighteen years?Politic1983.home.blog.
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