ASH IS PUREST WHITE (JIANGHU ER NV) World Cinema

It’s 2001, and Qiao (Zhao Tao) is the tough-minded girlfriend of low-level gangster Guo Bin (Liao Fan), who runs a nightclub and gambling den. When Guo Bin is attacked on the street by a group of thugs on motorcycles, Qiao spares no time in putting everything on the line for her boyfriend: She jumps into the action and fires warning shots with an illegal gun. From there, ASH IS PUREST WHITE begins its haunting march through the next two decades, as we watch Qiao emerge from years of hard prison time for Guo Bin’s crimes, only to find that her beloved has moved on with another woman. As Qiao attempts to get her life back together in a China that is quickly shapeshifting, Jia Zhang-ke’s latest sprawling masterwork emerges as an enigmatic portrait of individuals navigating the country’s new “capitalism” at the dawn of the millennium. – Beth Hanna