Only the River Flows

"Ma Zhe" (Zhu Yilong) engenders an almost adulatory degree of support from his team as he leads them on an investigation following the discovery of the body of the goose-rearing "Granny Four" on a remote riverside. Suspicion quickly falls on her adopted friend known simply as the "madman", but the detective is not so convinced that things are that straightforward. His ensuing task isn't helped by pressure from his ping-pong playing boss to conclude quickly and by the fact that he and his wife are expecting a baby - and that procedure is not going to be as simple as they might like. With the rain pretty much relentless throughout, he encounters some quirky local characters who seem to muddy the waters rather than offer him clarity. Clarity? Well that's an element to this story that is a bit too sparing at times. "Ma Zhe" finds his troubles gradually getting the better of him - yes, there are more bodies - and soon his own grasp on reality becomes distinctly compromised. Can he keep it together long enough to solve the crime? The film starts with the usual affirmation of the communist values of team play before entering the realms of predictable cop drama tempered with a bit of undercooked psycho-babble that Zhu Yilong tries to hard hold together. By the denouement, though, I felt way too much of the plot was contrived to try to tap into the psyche - of him and us - and it didn't really work. That said, he does well here and we do get quite a tense sense of his gradually becoming overwhelmed by the scenarios that test his usually linear style of working, thinking and living. Sadly, aside from "Ma Zhe", the characters are barely developed and director Wei Shujun seems more interested in focussing on an admittedly gritty and authentic looking peek at 1990s rural China, whilst rather abandoning the detail and characterisation of story to the sidelines as the dream sequences blur more and more the line between reality and fantasy. It does move along well enough, but I found it a bit of a meringue of a film - not much when you get into it.