The Wild Goose Lake – first look review

China’s Diao Yinan land­ed the Gold­en Bear prize at the Berli­nale in 2014 for his Black Coal, Thin Ice, a film that impressed the jury by mer­it of its orig­i­nal take on the gang­ster pic­ture and the finesse with which the direc­tor exe­cut­ed his refresh­ing of the genre. Like so many mas­ter film­mak­ers, a dis­tinc­tion he has now earned beyond any shad­ow of a doubt, he fol­lowed his most high-pro­file suc­cess by doing the same thing differently.

The Wild Goose Lake is anoth­er assured, exhil­a­rat­ing tale of crim­i­nal­i­ty and the hav­oc it wreaks on inter­per­son­al con­nec­tion, with every­thing impres­sive about its pre­de­ces­sor – atten­tive pro­ce­dur­al detail, curi­ous exper­i­ments with colour and shad­ow, action set pieces that’d make Michael Mann envi­ous – raised to the Nth degree.

There’s not a sin­gle false step in its two hours; every edit, every shot set­up, every move­ment of the cam­era max­imis­es the raw cin­e­mat­ic effect. There’s pow­er in Diao’s more sub­dued pas­sages, but when he real­ly lets loose and the fists (or bul­lets, or strate­gi­cal­ly con­cealed boo­by-traps) start fly­ing, this film’s great­ness trans­forms from the kind that sneaks up on you to the kind that blows you away.

Diao’s writ­ing makes a view­er work for it, fine-points com­pre­hen­sion slip­ping away with even a moment’s tune-out, but the broad con­tours of its plot can be fol­lowed eas­i­ly enough. On his first day out the feds, made man Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) reunites with his bik­er crew at a gang­land sum­mit that quick­ly descends into fisticuffs super­charged by rapid-fire cut­ting. The fight spills out into the pub­lic, and Zhou makes a pair of bad deci­sions that get both Wuhan’s ama­teur­ish police force and its felo­nious under­ground on his tail.

The term ​“ride-or-die” takes on new sig­nif­i­cance when so-called ​“bathing beau­ty” – a region­al term refer­ring to a sex work­er fre­quent­ing the beach – Liu Alai (Diao reg­u­lar Gwei Lun Mei) joins him as he flees. But can she be trust­ed not to give him up for the 300,000-yuan reward? If it sounds like they’re on course to estab­lish a frag­ile bond of inti­ma­cy through their shared predica­ment, think again. Their lone sex­u­al encounter con­cludes on a decid­ed­ly unsen­ti­men­tal note.

Their flight from con­se­quences takes them on a motor­bike tour through arrest­ing tableaux befit­ting the ugly beau­ty of indus­tri­alised Chi­na. A tex­tile fac­to­ry offers a pleas­ing sym­me­try even in its mechan­i­cal life­less­ness. A run-down apart­ment takes on a grimy glam­our due to the neon sign pour­ing rich magen­ta through the win­dow. A dance par­ty to Boney M’s ​‘Rasputin’ gets cut short by gun­fire, the atten­dees’ light-up train­ers skit­ter­ing away like Day-Glo shoot­ing stars. Even the snatch­es of shock­ing vio­lence have a nov­el­ty and inge­nu­ity to them; you’ll nev­er look at your umbrel­la the same way again.

In his best moments, view­ers famil­iar with Diao’s fil­mog­ra­phy will be able to see him work­ing to one-up his pre­vi­ous work. His cri­tiques of China’s class dis­par­i­ties have grown harsh­er, his yel­lows even more sick­ly, his track­ing shots more adven­tur­ous. It’s a rare priv­i­lege, to watch an artist lev­el up in this way. Hav­ing con­quered Berlin, Diao’s mak­ing his first appear­ance In Com­pe­ti­tion this year at Cannes. Judg­ing by his dri­ving need to attain a high­er and high­er ech­e­lon of great­ness, how­ev­er, it looks like he’s real­ly in com­pe­ti­tion with him­self. And with the high bar set by this lat­est tri­umph, he’s got his work cut out for him.