Overview
“The Wild Goose Lake” is a 2019 Chinese neo-noir/crime thriller film directed by Diao Yinan, who is known for his “Black Coal, Thin Ice” (2014), which won the Golden Bear award at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival. A Chinese-French co-operation. 111 minutes.
Plot
Set in Southern China in 2012. The area around the Wild Goose Lake has been left out of the redevelopment, and has turned into a lawless area.
Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) is out of prison and returns to a motorbike-theft gang where he had belonged.
In a battle against the rival gang group, he accidentally shoots and kills a policeman, and he is put on a nationwide wanted list.
The police offers a reward of 300,000 yuan for information leading to the arrest of Zhou. Zhou plans to enable his wife Yang Shujun (Wan Qian) to collect the reward. His original plan was to meet Shujun near South Station in the suburbs and to make her call the police, but a mystery woman named Liu Aiai (Gwei Lun-Mei) comes to see him on behalf of Shujun.
Aiai is one of the “bathing beauties”, who are prostitutes offering sexual services to visitors near the Wild Goose Lake. Zhou goes along with Aiai, but he becomes cornered by the police line and the rival gang group who try to collect the reward by killing Zhou.
Commentary
Though the scene of the film is Southern China, the film was shot on location in Wuhan, Hubei Province in Central China.
The film is worth seeing as a neo-noir that focuses on the dark side behind the economical growth of contemporary China, such as criminal organizations and the people at the bottom of the society. The highlights of the film are the stylish and colorful images.
