The rise of independent Chinese cinema over the past few decades has had a remarkable effect. These films, usually realist dramas, are produced outside of the government-approved studio system. As such they are regularly either blocked from local release or, as is increasingly becoming the case, not submitted for domestic release in the first place. They are widely screened and feted at international film festivals, however, and that has slowly transformed the indie sector into a perverse cottage industry of grounded stories of working class Chinese life aimed entirely at middle-and-upper class cineastes in rich western countries.

One of the most noted filmmakers within this group is Jia Zhangke. His 2015 feature Mountains May Depart did receive funding from the Shanghai Film Group and Xstream Pictures, but also from French distributor MK2. It competed for that year’s Palme D’Or at Cannes. The film follows Tao (Zhao Tao), a 25 year-old shopkeeper in Shanxi province who finds herself caught in a love triangle between two suitors: one of them a working class miner named Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong) and the other the upwardly mobile entrepreneur Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi). The film follows Tao and her family through three stages: the first set in 1999, the second in 2014, and the final act in 2025 (10 years into the production’s future).

It is through Tao’s story than Jia explores the changing state of Chinese society in the face of growing emigration to the west and shifting attitudes towards capitalism. Key to the film’s soundtrack is the Pet Shops Boys’ 1993 recording of the Village People’s popular hit “Go West”. A widely known LGBTIQ+ anthem, it is repurposed here to represent the upward ambitions of its characters. While jarring in the film’s opening moments, it actually becomes both ironic and uplifting by the film’s end. There is also inventiveness in how the film is shot: each of the three chapters use a different aspect ratio, widening the image step by step from Academy to Cinemascope.

While the film possesses dramatic strength in fits and starts, the characters are ultimately too simplistic to fully work. Tao is provided with a particularly stark romantic choice of poor-but-nice versus rich-but-mean. From this foundation the film jumps ahead to 2014 in order to revisit Tao’s choice and consequences. It is this middle section that represents the film at its best, with a little more complexity and activity. From here the film jumps once more to 2025 to follow Tao’s adult son Daole (Dong Zijian) in Australia. This final section feels only tenuously linked to the rest of the film, and largely follows Daole’s growing relationship with his teacher Mia (played by Hong Kong cinema legend Sylvia Chang). It is a strange, wildly inaccurate version of Australia that Daole inhabits, notably through the vast collection of semi-automatic handguns and submachine guns that his father has on his coffee table.

There are elements that work through Mountains May Depart, but its broken-up narrative does it few favours. It rather feels like watching three short films in a row; one good one sandwiched between two poor ones. Festival audiences ate it up, of course, but is it actually any good?