Only the River Flows: WEI Shujun’s modern-day noir follows the police investigation of an elderly woman in a Chinese village and as the police officer goes deeper, he becomes more and more obsessed and unraveled. The mystery is never all that interesting, and most suspects and colleagues aren’t engaging either. Truth be told, the film is more interested in setting the mood anyway (and it succeeds at that), but the result is a quite murky and dull investigation. Director of Photography CHENGMA Zhiyuan gives the film a dark muddy, dirty, lived-in look which is instrumental for that; it is a very fine work. ZHU Yilong plays the protagonist, an overworked detective, efficiently; the only other member of the cast who is memorable is TONG Linkai as the somewhat abused but hard-working underling.