Review: The Wild Goose Lake

Image courtesy of Film Movement.

Diao Yi'nan's neon-lit noir "The Wild Goose Lake" is the type of film you can admire and enjoy, even if you don't quite understand how all of the pieces fit. It's stylish, well acted, prone to sudden acts of shocking violence and somewhat labyrinthine in terms of story.

The picture vacillates between gorgeously lit - and occasionally languid - scenes of dialogue and frenetic scenes of pursuit, gunplay and gory violence. As the film opens, Zenong Zhou (Ge Hu), a criminal on the lam, meets with Liu Aiai (Gwei Lunmei), a mysterious woman who was once a "bathing beauty" -  in other words, a prostitute, but one who typically carried out her business in the water - to set up plans for him to meet with his wife, Shujun Yang (Regina Wan), who doesn't seem to find the concept of a reunion with her significant other that appealing.

The trouble for Zenong all started during a meetup between two groups of motorcycle thieves - one led by Zenong and another led by a violent guy named Cat's Eye. A fight breaks out - a prosthetic leg is yanked off, a man is shot, others brawl and become bloodied in the process. As the two groups flee, Cat's Eye sets up a trap that leads to a gruesome death for one of Zenong's lieutenants, and Cat's Eye attempts to kill Zenong. While fleeing, Zenong mistakes a police officer for one of Cat's Eye's men and kills him. From then on, he's a wanted man on all fronts.

During the course of its proceedings, it's occasionally difficult to determine the relationships between some of the various characters, and why some remain faithful or betray others - or even exactly how they do so. There were times when I didn't quite understand why a character's action was taking place, but this is the type of picture where you just have to go with the flow, and follow the dreamy picture's own offbeat logic.

It may not always work, but "The Wild Goose Lake" remains compelling throughout, mostly due to the meticulous visuals in nearly every scene. There's some stunning camerawork and breathlessly gorgeous imagery - a motorcycle chase at night, neon-lit hotel rooms and streets and a bizarre shootout involving a man in a tree and some animals at a zoo. The film also features one of the most unusual - but memorable - death sequences, which involves an umbrella.

I haven't seen Yi'nan's other films, although I'm likely to seek out "Black Coal, Thin Ice," which also earned some rave reviews upon release six years ago. Despite "The Wild Goose Lake" being a little uneven, it's well worth seeing, and is a good showcase for its director's talents. I have no doubt he'll go on to do great things.