ADIFF presents Mountains May Depart

Quote: “An extraordinary performance by Zhao Tao is the beating heart of Jia Zhang-ke’s ambitious, time-jumping, continent-straddling drama” – Robbie Collin, The Telegraph

Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains May Depart is a mysterious and, in its way, staggeringly ambitious piece of work from a filmmaker whose creativity is evolving before our eyes. It starts by resembling a classic studio picture from Hollywood, the sort of thing George Stevens or Douglas Sirk might have made, or perhaps something like Mu Fei’s Chinese classic Spring In A Small Town. Then it morphs into a futurist essay on China’s global diaspora and its dark destiny of emotional and cultural alienation. In this movie, the boundaries are getting pushed, visibly, between the opening and closing credits.

His movie is split into three parts, taking place in 1999, in 2014 and in 2025. Jia’s wife Zhao Tao gives a superb performance as Tao, a young woman who is dating a coal-miner Liang (Liang Jingdong). But Tao is also being courted by the impossibly conceited Jingsheng (Zhang Yi). They later have a child that Jingsheng insists on naming “Dollar”. Meanwhile, the devastated Liang moves away, but later in 2014 they are all to meet again, and later again in 2025, when Dollar is a twenty-something college dropout in Australia.

Peter Bradshaw

The Guardian