CAUGHT BY THE TIDES

(director/writer: Jia Zhang-ke; screenwriter: Jiahuan Wan; cinematographers: Eric Gautier, Nelson Lik-wai Yu; editors: Yang Chao, Matthieu Laciau, Xudong Lin; music: Giong Lim; cast: Zhao Tao (Qiao Qiao), Li Zhuban (Guao Bin), Pan Jianlin (Lao Pan), Ren Ke (singer); Runtime: 111; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Zhang Dong, Shozo Ichiyama, Casper Liang Jiayan; Janus Films/Momo pictures; 2025-China-in Mandarin with English subtitles)

“Dazzling romantic drama.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Using unused past films of his from over the last 20 years of his vast archive (plus 30 minutes of new film), starting in 2001, the inventive Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke (“Ash is Purest White”/”Where has the Time Gone”) directs and co-writes with Jiahuan Wan this experimental, dazzling romantic drama. It’s filmed with his usual ensemble cast. Its arthouse narrative reveals China’s big socioeconomic transformation this century to enliven its romantic tale.

The club dancer and singer Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao, the director’s wife) and a small-time shady music promoter, construction worker and petty criminal Guao Bin (Li Zhuban) are a young couple who separate when Bin is looking elsewhere for better economic opportunities in his businessman job for a construction firm. He leaves the northern Chinese city of Datong, a coal mining town, for the provinces undergoing radical modernization changes. In Fenjie city, Bin gets involved in a crooked land deal with a local politician, who has fleeced the public.

The jilted woman goes after the scoundrel even though he rarely contacts her, passing places torn down by the program of the Three Gorges Dam in Fengjie County. Her long search also reveals great cultural changes in song and dance.

She tracks Bin down in 2006 in Fengjie only to reject him, but reunites with him in the time of Covid, in 2020, in Datong, when they’re both old. She works as a grocery clerk and he is back in his hometown working in construction.

It’s an emotionally effective work as both fiction and non-fiction, with long stretches of silences and a main character who delivers a great performance without dialog but through her facial expressions.

It played at the Cannes Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 7/5/2025  GRADE: B

dennisschwartzreviews.com