Ash is Purest White (2018)

Ash is Purest White (2018)

starring Zhao Tao, Liao Fan

directed by Jia Zhangke

136 minutes

in Chinese with English subtitles

Zhao Qiao (Zhao Tao) has a good relationship with Guo Bin (Liao Fan) her gangster boyfriend. Their world comes apart after they are stopped by some punks who beat up first Bin's driver and then Bin himself. Qiao, fearing the worst, gets out of the car and fires a gun in the air which gets everyone to back off.

Qiao goes to prison for illegal possession of a fire arm. She maintains that the gun was hers and that she just found it. She spends five years behind bars. Bin spends just a year in prison but he never comes to visit her in prison and isn't there when she is released.

Qiao locates Bin but has trouble getting to see him face to face. He has a new girlfriend. Qiao forces the issue and eventually gets to see him. He makes like he wants to have another chance with her but then he takes off into the night while she is sleeping.

Qiao moves on. She meets another man on a train while she is heading back to her home town. He shows an interest in her but she gets off the train and leaves him behind, while he is sleeping, after he admits to lying to her about his profession.

Qiao is later reunited with Bin, who by then is in a wheelchair. He had a stroke and has lost the use of one arm and at least one leg. She takes him in. She gets him medical attention. He learns to walk again but once again leaves her.

Thoughts

I'm not familiar with the director or any of the actors in this film. In researching this film I see that Zhao Tao has been in more than a few of the films that Jia Zhangke, her husband, directed.

The first two acts made sense to me. The third felt a bit tacked on, as if to emphasize what a bastard Bin was and how good of a person that Qiao was. I would have been surprised and probably disappointed if they had given it a happy ending. I don't think that Bin needed to be part of the third act.

This is a fairly bleak story. I was intrigued by the first two acts and perplexed by the third one, even though I have come to some conclusions as to what purpose it served.