Reseñas de la crítica

No matter that the plot development is deliberately murky, it’s the mood that catches you in its tides. Chengma Zhiyuan mirrors the gloom with his cinematography, beautiful in its bleakness and exploiting its occasional flaming flourishes to the max.

Shujun’s filmmaking sets up nature as aspirational, a place to go where one can escape the uncertainties of civilization; at the same time, nature practically taunts Ma Zhe as he caves from the pressure of the investigation, culminating in a shocking dream sequence that one day may rank among the great nightmares enacted in cinema.

The filmmaker has a gift for disorientation... that partly compensates for the muddiness of the plot.

Shujun has built a compelling, evocative mystery that maintains its enigmatic, unfinished feeling even after the higher-ups have closed the case and patted themselves on the back.

Only the River Flows examines crime not as a rift in the social fabric, but as the logical outcome of oppression so complete that it tends to elude notice. It’s no secret that Chinese cinema has suffered artistically under Xi Jinping’s regime, even as it has reaped truckloads of money. Only the River Flows provides a very welcome sign of life.

The craft brought to bear on Only the River Flows is captivating, but when it comes to matters of story, it cultivates a frustrating air of disinterest.

Wei Shujun’s latest is a mysterious and engrossing neo-noir that marks a great return to the subgenre for Chinese cinema.

Beguiling and mysterious, the film lends itself to multiple viewings in its consistently slippery realities and noirish sense of existential dread as Ma attempts to find himself amid the contradictions of ‘90s China in a land very much under construction.

Like the greatest genre exponent, Raymond Chandler, Wei cares less about logistics than about mood. And so his rainy, grainy movie (DP Chengma shoots on film in low light, giving the images a lovely dirty texture) looks and feels as hardboiled as its hero...

This enigmatic, progressively more engrossing noir is... Structurally inventive, if not downright format-twisting...

Shot by the talented Chengma Zhiyuan (Fires on the Plain) in a vintage style that’s purposely murky and tinged with various shades of mud, the film’s aesthetic echoes its somewhat opaque plotting, which doesn’t exactly make it an edge-of-your-seat affair.

His [Wei's] directorial stamp on the film is distinctive yet not showy, and his exquisite blocking makes Only the River Flows a beautiful film to look at even with the chosen drab colour scheme... Where the film suffers is in its screenplay, also penned by Wei.