Poetry of the Night: The Noir Trappings of Diao Yinan's 'The Wild Goose Lake'

Replete with sumptuous night-time sequences and gripping, if perfunctory, cat-and-mouse scenes, The Wild Goose Lake evidences – yet again – the stylistic prowess of Chinese writer/director Diao Yinan. Building a world of gangsters, revellers, sex workers and cops, the film is also a meditation on crime, violence, and the tension between culpability and necessity, writes Nicholas Godfrey.

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film noir, China, Hubei, Hays code, censorship, police, theft, Black Coal, Thin Ice