Only the River Flows

A rainy town in the south at the start of the nineties. An old woman is found dead by the river. Ma Zhe, head of the criminal division, runs the investigation and a suspect is found quickly: a mute man of unsound mind who lived beside her. His superiors want the file closed. Ma Zhe is not convinced, and the more he digs the more he sees that everyone in the town has a secret. The killings continue. Wei Shujun directs. Zhu Yilong plays Ma Zhe. The source is a novella by Yu Hua. It was shot on 16mm. The image is grainy, the colours are faded and the frames are tight; the result resembles not nineties Chinese cinema but the texture of television and photographs from the period. The narrative begins as a detective story and refuses to be one. An answer arrives and explains nothing; the real subject is the coming apart of Ma Zhe's own mind and the breakdown of his relation to what is true. The town's police station has been moved into a disused cinema and the investigation proceeds in front of the screen, which is the most discussed visual idea in the film. It screened in Un Certain Regard at the 2023 Cannes film festival and took far more at the Chinese box office than expected. Who it is for: viewers who like slow Chinese thrillers and films that break the classical detective shape. Who it is not for: anyone looking for an answer is disappointed, the pace is heavy, and the ending is deliberately unresolved.