Director Tao Zhang’s “Against the Flow” — which played at his year’s Tribeca Festival — isn’t an easy film to review. At only 80 minutes the film is purposeful and slow, more artistic than narrative-driven. It has much to offer for interpretation but less to grasp easily. It’s a study of many things: a couple’s differing ideas for parenthood, their lives, their dreams, and their expectations. It’s sparse of dialogue. I was reminded instantly of Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives” — not for similarities of violence but in the scantness of dialogue over purposeful shots. Yet “Against the Flow” — taking place in China — is both deeply cultural yet illusory. And equipped with only a small synopsis with which to compare it to, it left a lot to the imagination for me. Perhaps a little too much.
The film opens on a couple, Dayao and Tiantian (Weihao Xu and Xingchen Lü, respectfully), lying on a cot in a dimly-lit room. The place is small and barely furnished. And we soon learn that they travel daily to a large city to work. Tiantian works in a school cafeteria and Dayao works construction on high-rises. They live in the country; early on we see Dayao must drive the two from their remote cabin where they live with his mother (Shilan Chen) to the bustling metropolis. Tiantian asks him to drive slow: she’s pregnant and expecting a child. It’s Tiantian’s dream that the couple move to the city and find a flat. She wants to give their child all the possibilities she never had. Dayao feels at home in the country. At the film’s opening it’s clear he wants to remain in the country, hunt for food, and live in simplicity. It’s debatable whether Dayao wants a kid at all.
A Still, Introspective Film
What I found difficult about “Against the Flow” was its hyper-reliance on cinematography to sell it and very little dialogue to help. Cinematographer Rui Poças shows both the city and the country with equal splendor. And while we get more scenes with Dayao experiencing the country’s solitude and what it means to him, I felt we get less with Tiantian. A scene between the couple as they visit a flat she’d like to rent — which Dayao intentionally or unintentionally sabotages — shows us her big city aspirations. But it’s also clear from their poverty level that they can’t afford it. There are some sad scenes along with this, especially as Tiantian works herself to the bone under an unofficial deadline. A coworker tells her — rightly — that she’ll lose her job if management sees she’s pregnant, being seen as a liability.
It’s in spaces like this that “Against the Flow” reminded me of Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” in its commentary on social caste and the impossibility of moving up. Yet that’s not the film Tao Zhang wanted to make. It’s a statement on the divide between people in relationships who want different things. And while Zhang resists — at least narratively — moralizing on these differences, I do feel the director sides with Tiantian more. It’s difficult, because we enter the picture at a time when we see both parties wanting different things. Yet we never see or hear a discussion where either verbalizes this. After a construction accident handicaps Dayao, things become even more destabilized. Tiantian relies on a friend she meets at work, Xiaoying (Catherine Fang) to explore her city ambitions. Meanwhile, Dayao either wanders around the countryside or sometimes stays with Xiaoying, where he is clearly a burden. After the construction accident Dayao says little. The film never explicitly states it, but it’s clear he has a traumatic brain injury and now has the mind of a child. His ability to hunt birds with a slingshot and his farming acumen remain unharmed, though.
Minimal Narration Adds Difficulty to ‘Agains the Flow’
And it’s here that we can see Tao Zhang is making points about the difference between Tiantian and Dayao artistically (Dayao avoids making the decision to move to the city through sheer chance), while also layering their growing incompatibility. It doesn’t help that aside Xiaoying — who looks to be a teenager — Tiantian has no one left to talk to. One visit to her mother shows how alone she feels. The woman has little empathy for her and only wants her to “get an abortion and split up with that moron.” We feel for Tiantian here. But we feel for her less as she returns home, finds that Dayao has suffered a tragic loss, and instead of empathy offers only frustrated aggression.
The biggest complaint I had with “Against the Flow” is that its narration — which is minimal — takes a back seat to its using its cinematography as a canvas for interpretation. It’s hard to side with Tiantian, as we don’t know that much about her. Likewise, it’s equally hard to side with Dayao, because, by the film’s third act, he has little mind left at all. Some of the commentary on poverty is apropos (one scene as pregnant Tiantian gets weak while window washing and must eat a hardboiled egg she’s kept in her pocket before continuing on was especially crushing). Yet another between Dayao and a work colleague before his accident hits in a different direction. His coworker imagines all the things he’d buy with money were he rich, while Dayao only stands and listens. He’s content with his simple farm life and doesn’t want any of that. The construction accident erases that stress from his life. Maybe it was fate. Or maybe life is just chaos and it was all happenstance.
Beautifully Shot Yet Narratively Abstract
“Against the Flow” is shot beautifully and offers images that stick with you. Personally, I found it a bit too artistic to mesh with and a little too abstract to feel much about. Because it paints Tiantian and Dayao so solitarily throughout, I never got the impression of a couple that started together and were brought apart by circumstance and life ambitions. Rather, I feel “Against the Flow” is a rather funereal look at two people who were probably drifting apart long before the opening frame, are punished with poverty on top if it, and feel solitude even amongst each other. The film’s final scene is bitter and sad. Yet maybe, somewhere out there, Dayao and Tiantian eventually get what they need.
“Against the Flow” had its world premiere at Tribeca Festival in the International Narrative Competition on June 7th. Follow us for more coverage.
