A bittersweet tale from China’s boldest contemporary director
Ash Is Purest White 15 cert, 136 min ★★★★★ Dir Jia Zhangke
Starring Zhao Tao, Liao Fan, Feng Xiaogang, Xu Zheng, Zhang Yibai
It’s hard to remember the last time an actress aged as convincingly on screen as Zhao Tao does in the melancholic, gently epic Ash Is Purest White. This luminous star, the wife and constant muse of Chinese voice-of-his-generation Jia Zhangke, begins the film as a gangster’s moll, Qiao, whose boyfriend Bin (Liao Fan) holds sway in a fast-declining mining town called Datong. In the main bar-cum-casino, she pushes the clientele around and disports herself with borrowed cigarettes, bored and in charge, and looking like a million dollars.
A lot has changed for her by the film’s conclusion 17 years later, including a five-year stint in prison for defending Bin from rival goons using an illegal gun. Zhao’s transformation, and the entire arc of her performance, are remarkable to behold. Her hairstyle changes over the years, but there’s little evidence of encrusted make-up or prominent greying. The effects of a hard time seem visible in the actual performance, though – the set of her mouth, the intensity of her sunken gaze, the stoop of her shoulders. And the character’s vitality and fortitude are offset by the great delicacy of her
acting. It’s sensational, career-best work.
For a full hour after Qiao’s release, the film has a near-magical drift and unpredictability. She travels by ferry to find Bin, who has settled down with a new mistress and does everything he can to avoid a reunion. This takes her through the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River, a landscape about to change utterly as the hydroelectric dam, one of China’s vastest industrial projects, awaits completion.
Jia has used eight previous features, starting with 1997’s Xiao Wu, to chart his country’s social and economic change, but he has rarely had a character as transfixing as Qiao to serve as his human flotsam, bobbing on these shifting tides. Her quick grift in this new world order – it’s palpably a wealthier place, with crime and corruption now two sides of the same coin – keeps the story buoyant, with ad hoc scams helping her back on her feet. And she’s drawn, more irresistibly than we are, back to Bin, whose toxic hold over her feels like an anchor she can’t cut loose.
Giddy musical sequences, including YMCA this time as a culturally head-spinning refrain, aren’t new in Jia’s work, but offer a hand of welcome to Western audiences, which this Chinese-french co-production extends more disarmingly than ever. If 2013’s bitingly tough A Touch of Sin remains the first port of call in appreciating China’s boldest contemporary auteur, this is his rangiest, most bittersweet story of a life. TR