The preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke (STILL LIFE, A TOUCH OF SIN) has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous CAUGHT BY THE TIDES. Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years — a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes and newly shot dramatic sequences — CAUGHT BY THE TIDES is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story. The film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. The always captivating Zhao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change — of people, landscapes, cities, politics, ideas.
“A masterfully poetic and pioneering fusion of the old and the new…. So uncannily successful that it is possible to come away from TIDES with the whimsical impression that this was the film [director Jia Zhang-Ke] was building toward all this time, as though all those lauded previous movies were simply him amassing the raw material for this one.” —Jessica Kiang, Variety “Zhao’s face is one of the most transfixingly expressive in modern cinema, and her long collaboration with her husband Jia stands among the screen’s greatest actress-director unions.” —David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter “Re-shuffling footage from films he has shot over the last 23 years, Jia Zhang-ke places his awe-inspiring cinematic mastery on full display in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES.” —Deborah Young, Film Verdict
