Getting the wonderful chance to be the host for an event held on IMDb's Film Festival board,I decided to take a closer look at the nominated titles. Introduced to Film Noir from Asia via John Woo's Heroic Bloodshed movie The Killer,I was intrigued to find a Neo-Noir from China on the list,which led to me breaking into the ice.
View on the film:
Burning up the black coal,co-writer/director Yi'nan Diao unveils a Neo-Noir landscape of frosty blues and decayed grey,with the people in the outdoor scenes being drained of as much colour as the body parts. Getting in from the cold, Diao sets Zhang's life in stylish chalk Neo-Noir reds and yellows which bluntly hit the pessimism of the case.
Spending 8 years writing the screenplay, Diao gives the Noir mystery a clinical edge,as Zhang becomes entwined in a detached love for Femme Fatale Wu.Cut down from the original 210 minutes cut, Diao sets the Noir in a glacial mold. Whilst giving light to some startling images,the sparse nature of the dialogue and the stilted solving of the mystery leaves to any feeling of intrigue being frozen under thin ice.
View on the film:
Burning up the black coal,co-writer/director Yi'nan Diao unveils a Neo-Noir landscape of frosty blues and decayed grey,with the people in the outdoor scenes being drained of as much colour as the body parts. Getting in from the cold, Diao sets Zhang's life in stylish chalk Neo-Noir reds and yellows which bluntly hit the pessimism of the case.
Spending 8 years writing the screenplay, Diao gives the Noir mystery a clinical edge,as Zhang becomes entwined in a detached love for Femme Fatale Wu.Cut down from the original 210 minutes cut, Diao sets the Noir in a glacial mold. Whilst giving light to some startling images,the sparse nature of the dialogue and the stilted solving of the mystery leaves to any feeling of intrigue being frozen under thin ice.