A gloomy assassin prowls the breathtaking fields of the Tang-era kingdom, while China's awkward march to become a 21st century world power stirs the emotional core of its people. The two Chinese-language films — Mountains May Depart from the mainland, The Assassin from Taiwan — let us savour two distinct sensibilities in the main competition as the world's largest movie showcase rounds its last bend. The awards will be announced on Sunday night, and the two films seem to have a decent chance of winning prizes, either big or small, in a year when the majority of the top-tier line-up leaves much to be desired.
First off, we have Jia Zhangke's biblically-titled Mountains May Depart, in which the director continues his chronicle of China's boom and the ripples felt across its vast territory. The film is structured into three parts, taking place in 1999, 2014 and 2025 respectively (with three different aspect ratios), and follows the forlorn destinies of four people that correspond to the destiny of China. In the stratospheric rise of the nation on the world economic map, it seems the people have to move along with the same astounding speed or be left ailing and alone in the dusty past. Jia is a filmmaker who for the past 10 years has captured that sense of hope and longing with a determined consistency, as all of his characters rejoice in new-found opportunities and yet feel torn by the uncertainty of their unknown future.
Mountains May Depart focuses on three friends in the coal-mining town of Fenyang, the director's hometown in Shangxi. At the centre is Shen Tao (Zhao Tao, the filmmaker's wife and regular actress), a dance instructor who we first see in the film jitterbugging to Pet Shop Boys' Go West — it's 1999, and the song is a clear sign about where she and the townspeople think their country wants to head. Tao is wooed by her two friends, the rich and showy Zhang and the humble and poor Liangzi. Perhaps quite rightly, Tao chooses the wealthy Zhang as her husband, while Liangzi leaves town to find work in another mine. Years later in 2014, these characters meet again, their lives upturned or capsized, as China becomes a full throttle moneymaking beast for those who know how to play it. The last part of the film — and the weakest, which almost undermines what came before — takes place in 2025 in Australia, where Tao's young son is living the life of a Chinese in a foreign land.
Zhao Tao, the actress, emerges here as a strong contender for best actress. The arc of her character charts the emotional pain and gain (more of the former) of China's small people: from a vibrant, song-and-dance bubbly youth to a divorced mother and a lonely old woman. Mountains May Depart doesn't have the pointed anger of Jia's previous film A Touch Of Sin (which didn't get a release in China), and its dramatic situation sometimes feel generic — but this is a sincere and honest portrait of the people swept along the waves that they almost didn't see coming. Jia's tender brand of social realism works because he has a way of capturing the stark landscape of a rural town fronted by its villagers full of hope and despair, and his China feels real, raw and sullenly beautiful.
But it's another kind of beauty that stirred a Cannes buzz on Thursday. From Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien comes the long-awaited martial arts film The Assassin, though the rules of Wuxia film have been radically rewired here. The Assassin, starring Shu Qi as a dagger-wielding hitwoman in the 9th century on an assignment to kill a prince once betrothed to her, is a contemplative drama of arresting visuals, with a few bursts of sword-clashing sequences that come and go in evaporating mist. In short, this is a martial arts film from the director of poetic, human-drama titles such as City Of Sadness and Millennium Mambo, and Hou's slow, pensive, intensely observant style is applied to the genre popularly known for its speed and spontaneity.
The result is extremely striking. Every shot in The Assassin is stunning in its composition, colour, and the way the camera looks deeply into the background, either interior or open space, and lingers so lightly to let us take in every minute detail. The vivid green of the leaves, the fuchsia shawls of the palace dancers, and the midnight-black costume of Shu Qi's assassin — they come together like verses of a tone poem. Many times, we don't quite follow the story, but after a while, that doesn't seem to be the point when The Assassin (which will disappoint those who expect big fight scenes in the vein of, say, The Grandmaster or House Of Flying Daggers) works more as a ruminative tableau.
Both Mountains May Depart and The Assassin are likely to be the strongest Chinese-speaking films of the year (in a minor controversy, Cannes incorrectly listed Hou as a "Chinese director" when in fact he's from Taiwan; the festival quickly amended the mistake). They both also feature strong and conflicted female leads caught in a dilemma, which seems to reflect Cannes' show of feminist tendencies this year. No Chinese film has ever won the Palme d'Or, and while it's a foolish game to guess the mind of the jury led by the Coen brothers, anything can happen on Sunday.
Zhang Yi and Zhao Tao in Mountains May Depart.
