ReviewCannes 2019: Summer of Changsha film review – crime drama smoulders but fails to spark

Debutant director Zu Feng also plays the lead character, an angst-ridden cop whose investigation into a murder brings him face to face with the victim’s sister

Both feel responsible for the death of a loved one – cue sad looks and grave talk, and a murder mystery turned relationship drama that in the end lacks soul

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Huang Lu (left) and Zu Feng in a still from Summer of Changsha, which Zu directed.

Published: 10:38am, 23 May 2019Updated: 10:38am, 23 May 2019

2/5 stars

Another day, another Chinese film noir showing at the Cannes Film Festival. The directorial debut of actor Zu Feng (who last appeared on the Croisette as part of the cast of Lou Ye’s Mystery in 2012), in which he stars alongside Huang Lu ( G Affairs ), Summer of Changsha revolves around a world-weary detective’s investigation of a mysterious murder and his relationship with the victim’s equally jaded sister.

Screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the tail end of the festival, when industry executives and journalists have already begun their retreat from the French Riviera, Summer of Changsha would have remained relatively obscure if not for the intervention of – who else? – China’s censors.

A day before its premiere at Cannes, the film’s official Weibo page announced that its cast and crew would not be present for the event because of “technical reasons” – a euphemism for problems with the censors at home.

So the guessing game begins: what held censors back from approving Summer in Changsha’s Cannes screening? Was it the close-up shots of severed limbs with which the film opens? The occasional sex scene? Characters smoking in hospitals? A subtle scene depicting a moment of self-harm? Or the fact that the film is set in a real city (the name of which appears in its title), something most Chinese filmmakers – at least those making crime-driven dramas – avoid for fear of antagonising municipal authorities?