Black Snow

Xie Fei’s Black Snow, radically advanced for its time, is a film of urban alienation and despair. The great Chinese actor/director Jiang Wen plays Li Huiquan, who returns to Beijing after years in prison implicated in his buddy’s murder of his girlfriend. Li is determined to go straight, and, though shunned by his former neighbours, sets up as a private market entrepreneur. He soon falls for the nightclub singer Yaqiu, who reciprocates his gallant attentions (and provides the film with shots of Hong Kong cinema-inspired glitz and glamour) until her success propels her out of his orbit. Disillusioned in love, Li inevitably is drawn to drink and back into the underground life he swore he would abandon – with tragic results.
With its prowling, handheld camera and gritty location shooting, Black Snow is radical in its dedication to a contemporary, gritty, bleakly anti-social realism: it is a wonder that the film passed censorship at all. Coming right at the end of the 80s, it is remarkably prophetic, anticipating not only the mood of despairing resignation that settled over Chinese urban youth after the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement, but also foreshadowing the mood, subject matter and style of the Sixth Generation directors who followed in the 90s. (SK)