Jia Zhang-ke’s “A Touch of Sin” might come as a surprise for those enamoured with the director’s oft-meditative, deeply melancholy observations of modern China. In films like “Still Life” and “24 City” he showed the savage path of capitalism and how it swallows history forcing people to renounce to their culture and homes in order to make way for the god of globalization. In “A Touch of Sin” he seems to be saying that he’s played nice for far too long. The film opens with one of his usual idyllic landscapes, only this time it’s accompanied by several murders and one explosion, paving the way to two plus hours of cinema of anger.
Jia expresses his discontent through four stories, only interconnected by the oppression of their central characters and their hyper-violent methods of making justice (a geographical connection is suggested, but only to imply that this violent shift of values is permeating the entire country). All of the stories deal with poor people trying to make a living for themselves and finding obstacles represented by corrupt company owners, lewd tourists and unsurprisingly: the law.
Using knives, guns and other methods of torture, Jia paints a bleak portrait of the country meant to become the biggest world power in the very near future. The filmmaker suggests that there is nary a place in the vast nation, where greed and deceit haven’t taken over friendlier values, and his stories each escalate in subversiveness and tragedy. Even if he’s gone more Tarantino than Renoir, Jia remains a master of metaphors and “A Touch of Sin” is filled with images of trapped animals (mostly those also featured in the Chinese zodiac) in which the characters see themselves represented.
Funnier than it has any right to be, the film features indelible scenes of breathtaking violence, often bookended by moments in which cinematographer Yu Lik-wai highlights that beauty and death have always been deeply intertwined. Even if it seems a tad overlong, perhaps as if to resemble shock therapy, the film seems like an aimless tirade against the system until a character is confronted with the simple question of “do you understand your sin?”, time by which we might realize we’re also accomplices.
"A Touch of Sin" was an official selection of the 51st New York Film Festival.
