Amber Heard

A car plows into a crowd viewing a parade in Damascus, Virginia, causing many injuries.

Ooh-ed and aah-ed over, but largely in more arcane cinephile circles, Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke (Venice winner “Still Life,” Cannes 2012 doc ”I Wish I Knew,” “The World”) has made a name for himself to date with detailed, glacially paced, social realist films, often in the documentary tradition, set against a backdrop of a modern-day China that we rarely see: the China of disenfranchisement, displacement and social unease which comprises the flip side of the globalisation and economic boom times that make more headlines abroad. It provides fascinating, glimpse-behind-the-curtain subject matter, and Jia is nothing if not authentic, but his measured, long-take style can try the patience to the degree that really, the reason that we had this film as one to watch out for on our Cannes Anticipated list was because we’d heard that for the first time, Jia had incorporated elements of genre into his social critique. And we have always believed that just a spoonful of genre can help the...