Black Coal, Thin Ice is an unusual and evocative title. Unfortunately it also has nothing to do with the film’s Chinese title which translates literally as Daylight Fireworks, a phrase that is relevant in the story in at least a couple of instances but is less poetic in English. The discrepancy is notable enough that director Diao Yinan addressed it but I’m not sure that his explanation makes much sense. At least this choice suggests that he has a good sense of aesthetics, as the film itself aptly proves.

Set in an unnamed town in the north of China, this film opens with a gruesome discovery of dismembered body parts scattered among piles of coal. Detective Zhang Zili is one of the police officers assigned to the case but leaves the force after an altercation with a couple of suspects leaves two officers dead and himself injured. Five years later, the depressed Zhang is working as a security guard when he discovers from his former colleagues that the case is active again following more murders. Feeling the need to find some meaning in his own life, Zhang resolves to crack the case on his own time, beginning the trail with a quiet young woman who works in a dry cleaning shop and is somehow connected to all of the dead men.

This is clearly a neo-noir film, the Wikipedia list for the genre even says as much. Chinese actor Liao Fan plays the detective while Taiwanese actress Gwei Lun-Mei plays the delicate femme fatale. Noir films thrive on atmosphere and Black Coal, Thin Ice has this in spades. The gritty industrial town it’s set in is a suitably grim place for a murder mystery to play out and the nail-biting cold that even we in hot and humid Malaysia can sense in each of the character’s movements only adds to the sense of oppression. I’ve never heard of director Diao Yinan but his technical skills certainly seem impeccable. If nothing else, this movie does a wonderful job at capturing the form of the noir genre with its scenes of long shadows on ice. The imagery is starkly vivid and the mastery of color impressive, as when light is used to Gwei’s face such that she appears at once both vulnerable and ethereal.

I’m less convinced that it embodies the spirit of noir which by convention has to be dark and cynical. My gripes are mainly about the male detective who is too heroic to be properly noir. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re still not allowed to portray a protagonist as anything less than perfectly moral in China but Zhang’s fall from grace in this film is only perfunctory and indeed his arc can be seen as being a redemptive one. The film even ends on a relatively upbeat note. I’m not saying that they’re not allowed to experiment and try something new, but it does make the motivations of the various characters somewhat unrealistic.

Still, I can forgive a lot given its excellent production values, its great camera work and the vividness of its setting. It’s a solidly enjoyable thriller all around.