YNOT at the Movies

The acclaimed director Jia Zhangke's "Caught by the Tides" (风流一代 | China 2024 | in Chinese | 115 min.) arrives with the weight of time behind it. Pieced together from footage shot over the past two decades, it is less of a traditional narrative film than a long, slow meditation on change, memory, and loss—both in China and in Jia's own cinematic journey. This sprawling, impressionistic project, years in the making, feels like a personal summation of the director's favorite themes, even as it struggles under the looseness of its construction.

Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao), a dancer, is left behind as the world around her rapidly changes. After her lover Bin (Li Zhubin) disappears in pursuit of better opportunities, she embarks on a solitary journey through China's evolving cities and forgotten landscapes. Strikingly, Qiaoqiao remains mute throughout the entire film, a choice that lends her story an air of haunted isolation but also deepens the emotional distance between character and audience. Her silence turns her into a vessel for the passage of time itself, though at times it also flattens her into an abstract symbol rather than a fully realized person.

Jia stitches this narrative loosely, blending archival footage, documentary-style scenes, and new material into an impressionistic collage. At its best, the film captures the eerie dislocation of modern China with striking imagery and an acute sense of melancholy. The use of pop music to mark the passage of time is especially effective, layering bittersweet emotion over Qiaoqiao's otherwise wordless drift.

But for all its beauty, the film struggles to sustain engagement. The story is so fragmented that even key emotional beats—betrayal, longing, resilience—register more as passing impressions than real turning points. The elliptical structure, once a strength of Jia's work, here starts to feel repetitive and numbing. Without dialogue or deeper access to Qiaoqiao's inner life, the film's emotional impact often dissipates into abstraction.

"Caught by the Tides" moments of real poignancy and whispers of lives slipping away—but it never fully connects. It's a film that feels more significant in intent than in execution.

"Caught by the Tides" opens in theaters on Friday, May 16, 2025.