Jia's films put me in mind of Manny Farber's pronouncement on Godard, how he 'surrounds the spectator with long stretches of aggressive, complicated nothingness.' The complicated nothingness is very much on display here. We really don't know how Bin Bin and his friend Xiau Ji are going to address their troubles (actually they don't) and we lose interest in them very fast. This film features the most inept bank robbery in the history of cinema, you may die laughing.
Review of Unknown Pleasures
