Tag: Mo Chunlin

The Fallen Bridge (断.桥, Li Yu, 2022)

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Li Yu’s mystery thriller The Fallen Bridge (断.桥. duàn.qiáo) finds itself at a series of contradictions in the modern China and its film industry. The film was an unexpected box office success, though largely because it falls into a new category of boy band film in starring TFBoys’ Karry Wang locking in an audience of ardent fans much as Jackson Yee’s presence in Better Days had though it also plays into ongoing anti-corruption theme in recent cinema while simultaneously adopting a mildly positive stance towards whistleblowers if specifically within the field of construction.

It is of course an unescapable fact that hypercapitalistic working practices and ingrained corruption have led to numerous public safety failures with bridge collapses unfortunately a fairly common occurrence. This one is particularly problematic as a skeleton is discovered encased in the concrete during the cleanup effort. From the way it’s posed, it appears the man may have been buried alive. A preserved piece of paper found in a bag accompanying the skeleton states his intention to take his concerns to the head of the construction project that the structure is unsafe and should be entirely rebuilt. Of course, that would be incredibly expensive, embarrassing, and disadvantageous to others who have used the bridge as a way of forging connections with important people.

The bridge’s collapse is therefore also symbolic in pointing to the fracturing instability of these relationships along with that between college friends Zhu Fengzheng (Fan Wei), the project manager, and Wen Liang (Mo Chunlin), the would-be-whistleblower. Fengzheng has also been raising Liang’s daughter Xiaoyu (Ma Sichun) who was 12 at the time her father disappeared after seemingly being disowned by her mother who was under the impression he had runaway with his mistress. Now in her 20s and an architecture student, Xiaoyu becomes determined to learn the truth even as she begins to suspect Fengzheng who has otherwise become a second father to her and does at least seem to care for her as a daughter while his own son is apparently living in Australia. Teaming up with a fugitive, Meng Chao (Karry Wang), on the run for killing the man who raped his sister, she begins plotting her revenge while a police investigation into the bridge collapse and an additional suspicious death otherwise seems to flounder.

Though it may not mean to (as it seems unlikely to please the censors) the film gives tacit approval to vigilante violence in subtly suggesting that “official” justice is rendered impossible because of the complex networks of corruption that exist within the soceity. Meng Chao says the man who raped his sister was a judge which is why he had to kill him, while Xiaoyu seems to desire individual vengeance believing the police aren’t investigating properly but refusing to go to them with key evidence because she wants to kill her father’s killer herself. While carrying out their investigation, the pair end up adopting the wily daughter of another casualty of the villain’s greed and form an unlikely family unit marking them all out as good people who have been betrayed by the system which is itself corrupted by the nation’s headlong slide into irresponsible capitalism. 

Even so, revealing the villain so early weakens the suspense while their own motivations are left unexplored, assumed to be merely greed if perhaps also a wish to remain connected to influential people and be thought of as important at the cost of the lives of the general public (along with those of often exploited labourers) endangered by shoddy construction practices. It isn’t entirely clear how they intended to deal with the fallout of their machinations to cover up their past misdeeds, especially as the sub-standard work on the bridge has already been exposed though obviously could be blamed on others no longer around to defend themselves, but perhaps it all amounts to crazed self-preservation pitched against the righteousness of Xiaoyu and Meng Chao who are after all wronged parties in China’s deeply entrenched judicial inequality. Nevertheless, we get the inevitable title card (left untranslated in the overseas release) explaining that justice was served and a censor-pleasing ending that still in its way suggests the police are incapable of solving these crimes and that the petty corruptions of small-town life are otherwise impossible to prosecute. 

The Fallen Bridge streamed as part of the 18th Season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Only the River Flows (河边的错误, Wei Shujun, 2023)

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Spoiler warning

In the opening moments of Wei Shujun’s Only the River Flows (河边的错误, Hébiān de Cuòwù) children run through an abandoned building playing cops and robbers amid the ruins of a changing China. One could argue that detective Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) is little different from the boy who chases after the other children with a plastic toy gun in his hand and an apparent love of justice in his heart only to enter a room and find himself on the edge of precipice looking down on a digger several floors below already sweeping up the rubble while Ma and his police partner look on obliviously. 

Wei fully recreates the aesthetics of sixth generation cinema, filming on grainy 16mm with a score that immediately echoes the films of the 1990s. Yet this small town in southern China is also a noirish place full of dank corridors and crumbling buildings that reflect the slow death of the old factory system along with the accompanying anxiety and displacement. Ma Zhe is also somewhat displaced. As he’s first introduced it’s as the only plainclothes detective in a room full of policemen in military uniform. His genial boss sells a message of “collective glory” that sounds somewhat outdated and is continually undermined by the fact he seems to do little himself and in fact continually instructs Ma to close the case he is working on even if he isn’t really convinced that primary suspect really is the guilty party. 

Based on a novel by Yu Hua, the film’s Chinese title more accurately means “a mistake on the river bank” which could refer to the murder itself, a strange case of an apparently well liked old lady killed with a sharp object, or to an encounter Ma later has with the suspect who is referred to only as “The Madman”. Apparently adopted by the old woman, Granny Four (Cao Yang), to stave off loneliness after her husband’s death (presumably they had no children of their own) the Madman is middle-aged with some kind of learning difficulties and otherwise mute and docile never having displayed any signs of violence or volatility. Yet in his way Ma is also a “madman”, increasingly out of touch with objective reality and driven near out of his mind by his preoccupation with the case. 

Pushed past his limit, Ma feels himself stalked and eventually descends into a lengthy dream sequence in which he watches his recollections projected on a cinema screen only for the negative to dissolve in flames as if it were burning a hole in his memory. His own perceptions are not reliable as confirmed by the confusion surrounding a commendation he received at a previous posting that he can no longer find, while a friend he contacts says he can’t remember him every receiving it and would have been surprised if he had as back then Ma was drinking quite heavily. Overburdened by the case, he begins drinking again and is also filled with paternal anxiety while his pregnant wife spends her time to trying to construct the image of their family by completing a jigsaw puzzle featuring a picture of a mother and child. 

The couple are told, by a very unsympathetic doctor, that there is a small chance the baby may be born with a genetic abnormality that could result in cognitive impairment. While Ma leans towards an abortion (the one child policy in this era perhaps influencing his decision) his wife is determined to keep it, calling Ma a heartless man but also suggesting that the fate that has befallen him is some kind of karmic retribution. He feels the Madman in himself echoed in the fate that awaits his child and is unwilling to accept it, wondering what their life would be like with the world the way it is.

His sense of “madness” is centred in his individuality as the member of a collective and something that he finds echoed in the frustrating dead ends of his case. Several witnesses saw the body but did not report it, fearful of their own secrets being exposed. More deaths soon occur, not exactly related to the first but somehow as a result of it as if murder were catching and Ma is a point of infection bringing a hidden truth to light that accidentally exposes something others would have preferred remain private. Ma’s quest is to quell the madman within himself, as perhaps he does in once again putting on his uniform and joining the collective even if it means accepting their truth above his own or the doubts in his heart. A brief coda featuring Ma and his wife happily bathing their son in an atmosphere of warmth and comfort might suggest that order has been restored were it not for the unsettling look in the child’s eyes in the film’s final frame. Beguiling and mysterious, the film lends itself to multiple viewings in its consistently slippery realities and noirish sense of existential dread as Ma attempts to find himself amid the contradictions of ‘90s China in a land very much under construction. 

Only the River Flows screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival and will be released in UK & Irish cinemas in spring 2024 courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.

International trailer (English subtitles)