When
director Jia Zhang-ke introduced this film, he mentioned that before he started
to embark on “A Touch Of Sin”, he was actually in the middle of making another
film. However due to the dramatic
increase of very violent incidents occurring in China of late, he felt he had
to shelve the other film and immediately make what became “A Touch Of Sin”. Such was his outrage that he wanted to
highlight and make a statement about violence in China today and chose to do so
by taking four true stories ripped from recent headlines. Each story takes place in a different
province of China which Jia Zhang-ke said was a deliberate act to give a
complete view of the entire nation.
The
first story is about a man living in a mining town who is disgusted by the fact
that the town’s head politician (and his former classmate) has become wealthy
off the back of the place he is meant to be helping while those living in the
area still find themselves struggling to make ends meet. When he tries to protest these points in a
peaceful albeit public manner, he is set upon and badly beaten with a
shovel. This is the final straw for the
man, who is finally sick of being looked down upon, and decides to do something
about it via the use of a shotgun. The
next story is about a country man returning to his hometown to help lay to rest
his dead mother. After reuniting with
his wife and child, it soon becomes apparent that the man cares about very
little except, disturbingly, the gun he has in his possession and the feeling
he gets when he fires it. The third
story is about a young woman who after suffering the wrath from the wife of the
man she was having an affair with, is soon again abused by a customer who
mistakes her for a prostitute at the massage parlour she works at. This new abuse unleashes all of this woman’s
pent up anger and aggression that she has been bottling up for so long, which
ends in extreme bloodshed. The fourth
and final story is about a factory worker who after being blamed for a minor
injury to another worker on the job (and thus being expected to give this man
his wages for as long as he is off work for), decides to flee instead and finds
work as a waiter at an upscale brothel.
There he meets and falls in love with one of the sex workers there but
finding it too hard to deal with the kind of work she performs, the guy decides
again to flee his life, this time running right into the path of his past which
is about to catch up with him.
“A Touch
Of Sin” is an incredibly frustrating film to watch, however ironically, it is
also a very easy film to watch. The film
looks great with some truly beautiful cinematography (for the most part; there
were some scenes that looked far too digital for my liking) showing off the
different landscapes of China, and it is well acted too, but at the end of the
day the film has nothing to say. It just
feels like a very hollow exercise, which surprised me no end. In Jia Zhang-ke’s introduction, he mentioned
his anger in regards to the violence in China today and I expected this anger to
permeate through the film in its entirety, but I did not feel it once; it just
did not exist. Jia Zhang-ke seems happy
enough to just re-create these real life events as they happened, rather than
adding any subtext or political standing to them, which ultimately makes the
whole thing a pointless exercise.
Another
problem that “A Touch Of Sin” faces is the fact that it is so repetitive. While it is true, each of the four stories
are different, all of them are set up in the exact same manner, that by the end
of the first story we have worked out the formula for the rest of the film,
which ultimately makes “A Touch Of Sin” quite dull because we know what is
coming. In each story we are introduced
to a character who appears normal and each time something happens in their
lives triggering these people into ticking time-bombs and we then sit, waiting
for this character to finally explode into violence.
In
regards to the stories themselves, I found only the first and third ones to be
engaging enough that I cared about what was happening. The second story with the migrant worker and
his gun is a bit of a dud because the main character is so unlikable that you
just do not care, where as the final story starts strong only to fizzle at the
end.
Being a
film from mainland China I was not expecting the levels of violence that is
found in “A Touch Of Sin”. This is a
seriously gory film particularly in the initial segment when we are witness
time and again to the brutal power behind a shotgun and what damage it can
cause to the human body. The third
section of the film also has a lot of bloody violence in it as well which I
think a lot of people would find very confronting.
Overall,
while “A Touch Of Sin” is a beautifully shot and acted film, it is ultimately a
hollow experience. The film has nothing
to say and seems only to exist in an attempt to shock people by its own levels
of violence. Similar to my recent
opinion of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives”, a film can be as stylish
and beautiful as you want, but if you have got nothing to say, it will not
engage the audience and thus become pointless or worse, a wasted
opportunity. Sadly, I feel this is the
case with “A Touch Of Sin”.
3 Stars.
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