“Only the River Flows, a pitch-black crime noir from auteur Wei Shujun, comfortably topped the box office in mainland China on a quiet weekend.
The film, which is ostensibly a murder mystery but is more concerned with atmosphere than linear plotting, earned $12.6 million (RMB90.8 million) in its first three days, or nearly a third of the market, according to data from industry consultant Artisan Gateway.
The film premiered at Cannes, where Variety gave it a rave review, calling it an “inventive riff on Asian noir” and drawing comparisons to films by Park Chan-wook and Diao Yinan.
“Only the River Flows has since played a number of festivals including New Zealand, BFI London, Vancouver, Adelaide and last week’s Pingyao event in China.
Falling to second place at the box office after three weeks at the top was Zhang Yimou’s Under the Light, which earned $6.9 million for a four-weekend total of $176 million.
Chen Kaige’s war propaganda film “The Volunteers: To the War” came in third with $5.3 million. Its cumulative cume passed a symbolic milestone and now stands at $103 million.
CMC Pictures’ “Moscow Mission” took in $4.6 million for a cumulative total of $84.7 million. Huayi’s “The Ex-Files 4: Marriage Plan” came in fifth with $3.8 million for a cume of $131 million.
The four films that took second to fifth places were all released in the last days of September, in time for the National Day ‘Golden Week’ holiday. Their figures are all slightly disappointing, but there have been few major new titles released so far in October, so the trend is slowing.
Artisan Gateway reports that last weekend was worth $39.1 million nationwide. China’s year-to-date box office now stands at $6.78 billion, a 76% improvement on the dismal 2022, but still 12% below 2019 levels.
