Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
Director Jia Zhangke (2015’s bewitching “Mountains May Depart”) in this alluring, ravishing scenario about love, loss and survival in contemporary China; we follow “Qiao” (impeccable, magical performance by Zhao Tao, the director’s wife) commencing in 2001, concluding in 2018; Qiao’s boyfriend “Bin” (extraordinary, Liao Fan) a feckless, minor drug lord sees no reason to visit Qiao, imprisoned, for taking the “fall”, during her five-year tenure; Nietzschean, she emerges stronger, shrewder, determined to meet Bin on her terms; the years paint a circuitous, heart wrenching portrait of growth versus stagnation, power versus powerlessness, reality versus fantasy. Lushly atmospheric: (cinematographer, Eric Gautier), viewers move through the beauteous, elegiac, daunting Chinese landscape, bowing to a filmmakers awe inspiring aptitude.
“Ash is the Purest White” with its volcanic, cocaine references, metaphorically depicts a soul rising, Phoenix-like, from the hottest flame, impregnable, impenetrable, indestructible.
FOUR STARS!!!!
Peneflix
