ZHAO TAO AND LI ZHUBIN IN SCENE REWORKED FOR "ANGUISHING VIOLENCE" (DEBORAH YOUNG) IN CAGHT BY THE TIDES

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES 风流一代 (Jia Zhang-ke) - NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

CLIP FROM THE FILM

A kind of summation reviews many themes while resuming a favorite storyline

Jia Zhang-ke's symphonic, career-summarizing new film Caught by the Tides begins with a pre-title interlude in an enclosed space where women, shyly, then enthusiastically, show off their singing skills, then join together. This is followed by an enthralling sequence evoking Chinese collectivity, a vast space, singing, crowds gathered together: the editing has a brilliant, swirling flow. It's enthralling.

Then, we begin a return to the theme of a failed twenty-year-old romance where a man goes off in search of his fortune, featuring muse Zhao Tao as the lover left behind who belatedly goes off on a journey in search of him. He sends her a message saying he has gone to another province where he hopes for more action and promises to come back for her when he is successful. He never comes back. Long later they meet again. Neither has done well, despite the country's enormous growth.

The storyline encapsulates the time of most tumultuous change in China, with the Three Gorges dam and the displacement of millions of people that also includes Jia's career and growth as a director depicting all that.

In fact the way the career and the country and the story encapsulate, embrace, and illuminate each other in Caught by the Tides is so cosmic one can imagine blissfully watching this ilm forever, though it may also make one want to go back to the raw freshness of Jia's first few films, which are favorites of fans like me.

The plot line begins 2001, in the northeastern Chinese city of Datong. A working class woman named Qiao Qiao (longtime muse Zhao Tao) has a romantic relationship with her manager Guao Bin (Zhubin Li) as she hustles to make a living as a singer, model, and club girl. Guao Bin leaves Datong to try earning his living in another province. When she goes looking for him years later, her journey takes her through regions being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, as well as Guangdong Province. We see Guao Bin trying his hand at various businesses, including involvement with a shady politician. When Quao finally finds Guao Bin, she breaks up with him. Later in the covid era they reunite, considerably aged. This trajectory may reflect Jia's view of the fortunes of much of the Chinese population, where individuals have not fared as well as the economy.

When the film debuted in Competition at Cannes Deborah Young called it "dazzling" in of The Film Verdict, though she observed that "its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story." Indeed story takes second place to the film's symphonic collectivity; but there has always been that quality in Jia's work.

Jessica Kiang in Variety called the film "an epic, lyrical drama that is both Chinese master Jia's career-retrospective reinvention and a defining portrait of modern China." That is indeed how the film looks, though the portrait is very miuch Jia's own, since it relies on many images from his own bank of them. Bradshaw awarded Caught by the Tides 4/5 stars and offered up high praise. He noted that the theme will sound familiar to Jia fans"and that the encapsulated modern Chinese history includes breathtaking economic progress alongside some "very old-fashioned state coercion" as well as the successes of "mobster-businessmen," the "patriotic ecstasy" of Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympics, and all the "unacknowledged pain" caused by the displacement of communities for the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam covered by Jia's Golden Lion winning 2006 Still Life.

Bradshaw finds "a kind of epic power " in the final scene when the aging couple reunites.

Deborah Young pointed out that the whole film is constructed from scenes and outtakes of previous work, which could be done because those two actors played related roles in Unknown Pleasures, Still Life[/I, and [I]A Touch of Sin. Young suggests Jia's films have always been "strong on music and wordless images but thin on storylines, pacing and emotional expression." Well, that is not always true. Even if nothing has ever been quite up to Jia's first four films, yet he remains a powerful and distinctive filmmaker whos is central to contemporary Chinese cinema, and that is resserted here, even though for all the impressiveness of this new compilation, we look forward to a new direction.

Caught by the Tides 风流一代 (Fēngliú yīdài: "Romantic Generation"), 111 mins., debuted in Competition at Cannes May 18, 2024, showing also at Munich, Two Riversides (Poland), Jerusalem, Melbourne, Toronto, Vancouver, Busan and at New York, where it was screened for this review. Metacritic rating: ̶8̶0̶%̶. Now 88%.

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.