The Playlist by Chris Evangelista
As a visual love-letter to the Yangtze River, Crosscurrent takes your breath away. As a narrative film, it’s all washed up.
China · 2016
1h 56m
Director Yang Chao
Starring Qin Hao, Xin Zhilei, Wu Lipeng, Wang Hongwei
Genre Drama, Romance, Fantasy
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Gao Chun, a young captain, steers his cargo boat up the Yangtze river. His father has recently died and, according to his beliefs, his son is now responsible for liberating his soul. At the same time, Gao Chun is looking for the love of his life. But all the women he meets in all the different ports are the same person: a magical being who grows ever younger the closer he gets to the source of the Yangtze. His trip up river turns into a journey through space and time.
The Playlist by Chris Evangelista
As a visual love-letter to the Yangtze River, Crosscurrent takes your breath away. As a narrative film, it’s all washed up.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
It’s all about metaphor and mood, while the storytelling is so lightweight it might not exist. Without it, this drunken boat sailing on poetry can't hold interest for its entire two hour running time.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Cramming fantasy and mysticism, faith and history into a single riverboat journey, this dirgelike meditation on China’s painful economic rebirth dispenses with narrative in favor of semiotics.
Screen International by Lee Marshall
A meandering, sluggish tale that offers moments of great beauty but ultimately feels like a ragbag, take-your-pick bundle of poetic and spiritual suggestions inspired by China’s great Yangtze River.
Plotless, pretentiously literary and lousy at explaining geography, the movie fails to put Yang’s vision into a fictional framework that’s even remotely engaging.
Rarely has China's explosive economic growth been captured with such grace and with such a heavy heart.
The Film Stage by Zhuo-Ning Su
Crosscurrent represents quite a remarkable blunder considering how much effort and noble aspirations go to waste because its maker forgot to tell a good story first.
A surrealist masterpiece.
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