Slideshow
THE WILD GOOSE LAKE
MUST END THURSDAY, JUNE 4
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY DIAO YINAN
A gang leader on the run seeking redemption… A girl in trouble risking everything to gain her freedom… Both hunted on the hidden shores of The Wild Goose Lake. They set a deadly gamble for what may be their last day. “A definitive Chinese crime noir, in which the ravishing style and inventive staging form the substance. Staged and executed with…slick, dark dazzle… May just end up being the last word in Chinese crime noir… This is a film that lives in its vibrant craft and fluid reimagining of scenarios that should be stale clichés by now. Reteaming with cinematographer Dong Jinsong, Diao shows an extraordinarily elastic mastery of form… It is exhilarating to witness this symphonic choreography that seems less like it was mapped onto its locations, and more like it came from within…THE WILD GOOSE LAKE is like an organic feature of the Chinese cinematic landscape, as though it pooled onto the screen in all its oily, murky glory, having welled up from deep inside the ground. Suddenly, China feels like the noirest place on Earth.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety
CHINA / FRANCE 2019 113 MINS. IN WUHAN DIALECT & FRENCH WITH ENGLISH & MANDARIN SUBTITLES FILM MOVEMENT
Reviews
“The movie exhilarates... (it) doesn’t recycle film noir conventions so much as contrive — with a genuine sense of discovery — to locate these conventions in a realistic contemporary context.”
– Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
“Flamboyantly stylish. The ogling camera makes passes at erotically charged actors, as they enjoy languorous, nocturnal cigarette breaks amid picturesque dilapidation. THE WILD GOOSE LAKE satisfies all of your genre needs and at the same time shatters them. The shards are pretty - and they’re very sharp.”
– Stuart Klawans, The Nation
“A spellbinding pulp noir with a stylish edge and a sui generis fatalism.”
– David Fear, Rolling Stone
“An invigorating, poetic, and discretely brilliant Chinese noir.”
– David Erhlich, IndieWire
“Beautiful and darkly entertaining. Showing the spark of early Scorsese, Diao stages the fight with both discipline and spikey verve. There is nothing else like it at the movies right now.”
– Chris Barsanti, Pop Matters