Less a narrative feature than an impressionistic work of art, Jia Zhangke distills the past twenty years of his life through the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao) in his latest film, Caught by the Tides. The only “newly” shot portion for the movie occurs during its final half, set in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Qiaoqiao reunites with her former lover, Bin (Li Zhubin), for the first time since their separation. What precedes this section is a non-linear assemblage of footage shot by Jia, either for his past films, such as Still Life, Ash is Purest White, and Unknown Pleasures, or footage he kept for himself until today. 

Watching such a movie feels truly daring, as Jia moves away from his linear works into associative territory, linking one piece of shot-on-video footage with another, completely different, celluloid image. The most impressive moment occurs near its end, as the movie cuts from a top-down shot of a ballroom, where a group of people dance during the pandemic, to a fish-eyed digital zoom of a supermarket CCTV camera, first honing in on a pack of oranges, then clumsily careening around the space, desperately looking for an image to focus on. The camera follows Bin inside the market as he reunites with Qiaoqiao. From there, pure cinema occurs. 

Bin reunites with Qiaoqiao and, despite the face masks they are wearing, the two immediately recognize each other’s eyes. Jia lingers on their masked faces for a bit before Bin removes it, to the shock of Qiaoqiao, still unable to process that he’s in front of him, after so many years apart. It’s one of the most potent images in post-COVID filmmaking, where the director is able to find purpose in the sanitary limitations of the era, showing us that connections were still possible, despite the tragic situation the characters were living in.  

Many filmmakers have tried to express the COVID-19 era in film, but have failed to draw anything meaningful out of it. The only artist who got something out of the anxieties such an event drew was Steven Soderbergh when he made his paranoia thriller KIMI in 2022. Radu Jude also tried to say something out of such an event with his unofficial duology Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (both are masterpieces, by the way), but no filmmaker expressed dramatic power the way Jia does in this particular section with Caught by the Tides, let alone letting the silences of his (masked) actors speak in ways that words cannot. 

Zhao Tao’s performance is entirely silent, barring a section taken from Unknown Pleasures where the protagonist sings. But there isn’t a spoken word uttered by Qiaoqiao throughout the entire movie, and Jia lets us sit with her in silence, contemplating her future and the choices she has made that ultimately lead her to where she is during the pandemic. Even her exchange with Bin, preceding their breakup, is told through intertitles, with only their looks as the point of reference to make us feel their emotions. To some, that may be an alienating way to watch a movie, especially when Jia flows from one scene to the next without tangible linearity, a massive departure from what he is usually known for. 

However, there’s something so emotionally stirring in Zhao Tao’s portrayal of Qiaoqiao, whether in the repurposed footage from Jia’s past films or what was shot for this movie, that makes the experience so worthwhile. The best parts of acting are conveying everything you want to say without having the need to say anything. Few actors can accomplish this feat well and express a litany of emotions like this, yet Zhao Tao does it so effortlessly. Her forced smile hides feelings she doesn’t want to put forward, even though we can clearly read them. Qiaoqiao isn’t happy, and her current trajectory ensures she won’t find the peace she wants. 

It’s only during an interaction with a robot, in one of the year’s most moving exchanges, that we get to see the real Qiaoqiao, who warms up and happily smiles, for the first time, after the machine tells her, “Mother Teresa once said, if you love until it hurts…there can be no more hurt, only more love.” It’s the first occasion where we see her feel something, and the rest of the film, where Qiaoqiao ties up all of her past loose ends, gives her the courage to do what she needs to do to move on. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and profoundly affecting, even if Jia’s associations sometimes lose their meaning, particularly in the movie’s midsection. 

That said, even if Caught by the Tides sags and loses its intent in a few places, Jia Zhangke knows he has to anchor his decades-spanning emotional journey through the eyes of his wife and creative partner, Zhao Tao. It’s through those sullen, devastating looks that pierce the artifice of cinema and touch us so profoundly that we’re ultimately moved by this daring proposition from one of China’s greatest formalists, caught in the tides of the past and present, and offering us no solutions for a future that doesn’t look as promising as it might have been envisioned, by Qiaoqiao, or society itself…

SCORE: ★★★1/2

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It has been almost 3,150 days — more than 8½ years — since Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in Paris. On Tuesday, she finally gets to testify against the suspects.

By the fall of 2016, the Kim Kardashian West train had been speeding through the celebrity landscape like a bullet for years, running down anyone in its way and leaving everyone else in the dust. She was everything everywhere all at once, all the time. She had been married, then divorced, then had babies, then got married again. She broke the internet. And that fame train seemed destined to circle the globe in perpetuity.

Then came Paris Fashion Week. What could go wrong?

In the early-morning hours of Oct. 3, 2016, the Kim K. train suddenly derailed: A party of men entered Kardashian’s two-story Paris pad, armed with guns and zip ties and hunting for jewels. Specifically, Kardashian’s jewels, which she had flaunted on social media.

What happened in the Paris apartment?

Shortly after 2 a.m. local time, Kardashian was reportedly lying in bed clad only in a robe when she heard people stomping up the stairs in her two-story apartment at the Hôtel de Pourtalès. It turned out the men had been directed there by the night concierge, who said he had been threatened at gunpoint. She caught a glimpse of two of the guys, rolled off the bed and tried to call her bodyguard before her phone was taken from her.

Her wrists were zip-tied and duct-taped, and she was grabbed by the ankles — at which point, she told the police, she thought she was going to be raped. Instead, her assailants bound her ankles with duct tape and carried her to the bathtub, as Kardashian screamed for them to take her money and jewelry but please spare her life, because she was at that point the mother of two children.

The men did not speak English but kept saying, “Ring, ring,” she told police. After Kardashian told them where to find the massive diamond — a recent gift from then-husband Kanye West that she had been showing off on social media — they duct-taped her mouth.

Kardashian was left lying helplessly on the bathroom floor as the robbers left with their haul. A friend who was staying in a downstairs bedroom heard the commotion and called the reality star’s bodyguard, who had been out with her sisters Kourtney Kardashian and Kendall Jenner at a club nearby and quickly returned to the hotel.

Did people believe Kardashian’s story?

The internet-posting public did not believe her, at least at first. Self-styled pundits immediately suggested she had staged the whole thing for publicity — as if she couldn’t get that on her own simply by waking up and snapping a selfie. The reality star quickly sued MediaTakeout.com for libel after it said she made up the story, lied about the assault and filed a fraudulent insurance claim. Police, meanwhile, quickly dismissed the notion that Kardashian was lying because she was so badly shaken up, but seriously investigated whether it was an inside job. (The night concierge and the bodyguard are slated to testify at trial.)

The libel lawsuit was settled within weeks, CNN reported, with the website issuing a retraction and acknowledging that Kardashian had in fact been robbed at gunpoint.

When did authorities arrest and charge the suspects?

Arrests came Jan. 10, 2017, when 17 people were taken into custody in multiple raids around Paris. Kardashian’s chauffeur was among those arrested, but he was released after questioning. By 2021, the suspects had been narrowed to 12 people who were slated to stand trial. One suspect, however, has died since being questioned, and another has been excused from the trial because he is 81 and has advanced Alzheimer’s, the BBC reported.

In fact, French media has been referring to the main suspects as the Grandpa Robbers, due to their advanced ages — the eldest defendant is 78. They didn’t really know who Kardashian was at the time of the robbery but were reportedly told she was “a rapper’s wife.” Ten suspects remain on the hook, including one woman. Of those, five went into Kardashian’s apartment during the robbery. The rest are accused of aiding and abetting.

What have the suspects been doing since then?

One suspect, Yunice Abbas, told a French outlet in 2022 that since Kardashian “was throwing money away, I was there to collect it, and that was that. Guilty? No, I don’t care. I don’t care.”

Now 71, Abbas, one of two suspects whose DNA was found at the crime scene, has said he plans to apologize when he’s in court. He also says he was unarmed and acted as a lookout on the ground floor of the hotel.

“I saw one of her shows where she threw her diamond in the pool in that episode of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians,’” he told Vice in 2022. “I thought, ‘She’s got a lot of money. This lady doesn’t care at all.’”

The alleged mastermind behind the plot, Aomar Ait Khedache, wrote an apology letter to Kardashian from prison in 2017, saying he regretted his actions and realized the psychological damage he caused. “Old Omar” has admitted tying up Kardashian but denies being the brains behind the operation.

The other suspects, including Ait Khedache’s son Harminy, have maintained their innocence.

What happened to the jewelry?

About $6 million worth of jewelry was stolen, or maybe it was $10 million worth, depending on which of the many accounts can be trusted. Kardashian and ex-husband Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, reportedly submitted insurance claims worth $5.6 million. In the 8½ years since the robbery, only one piece has been recovered: a diamond cross on platinum that the suspects lost as they escaped on bicycles. Its value was estimated at just over $33,000, per Vanity Fair.

An 18.8-carat diamond ring — which was a gift to Kardashian from Ye — a yellow-gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, seven Cartier and Hermès bracelets and three gold-and-diamond grills were all in the haul, VF reported. Anything that was unique, like the stone in that diamond ring, has likely been broken down into pieces and resold, a jewelry-theft expert told People in 2016.

What happens next?

Kardashian is set to testify in Paris on Tuesday afternoon — around 5 a.m. in California. She will be questioned first by the judge, according to the New York Post, then by her attorneys, then by the prosecutors, and finally by the defendants’ attorneys.

In mid-April, a Kardashian attorney confirmed to the AP that she would testify at the trial, which started April 28 and is scheduled to run until May 23. But until she appears on the stand, the statement said, the reality mogul is “reserving her testimony for the court and jury and does not wish to elaborate further at this time.”

That sounds like it’s French for “no comment.”

Director: Andrew DeYoung
Writer: Andrew DeYoung
Stars: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara

Synopsis: A suburban dad falls hard for his charismatic new neighbor.

I don’t think it would be unfair to say that the expectation of Friendship is that this would be a feature length I Think You Should Leave sketch. Tim Robinson has a unique style of humor that is strictly his own and while it may not work for everyone, it definitely works for me. Starting off, the theater was laughing at every little thing Robinson was doing on screen. However, as the film went on, a collective anxiety and unnerved feeling washed across the theater. Friendship definitely lives up to the expectation that I described before, but what I didn’t expect was something so nightmarish and, to put it bluntly, depressing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hilarious, but by the time the credits roll I was wiped out.

Craig Waterman (Robinson) is a simple man that does very little outside of his day-to-day work. He is a married man with a son in high school, he gets a new neighbor that he quickly befriends, and frequently talks about “the new Marvel.” What sets him apart from the other characters in Friendship is he speaks almost exclusively in awkward jokes – common fare for his characters in I Think You Should Leave. But as the film progresses and he opens himself up more, it’s clear he is afflicted with arrested social development as he makes off putting comments and does bizarre things like shoving a bar of soap in his mouth as a joke (which does not land). 

What makes I Think You Should Leave likely to be rewatchable is that everyone in each bit is in on the joke to some degree. In I Think You Should Leave you’re being transported to some bizarre other world where the inhabitants are mild mannered individuals and one or two characters that perpetuate and drive a bit. In Friendship, if you remove Tim Robinson, it is a deathly serious movie. No one is feeding into a bit outside of him. The coverage of topics in Friendship include cancer, marital collapse, and a situation involving a missing person. I know the goal, even in the I Think You Should Leave bits, is to make the viewer cringe, but at times Friendship becomes a little suffocating.

Furthermore, Tim Robinson’s character he does – which he does for all of his comedy – works in small doses. On Saturday Night Live and I Think You Should Leave you’re given about 5 minutes, max, of this type of character. However, this type of character in a feature film is a little too much by the end. Each bad decision or off putting comment Craig would make compounds in the viewer. While I’m not entirely averse to the ‘cringe’ comedy, by the time the 100 minute runtime is up I was thoroughly exhausted.

With these things in mind, I weirdly found Friendship to be affecting. While I don’t directly identify with the Craig Waterman character or the things that he does, that feeling of longing was extremely palpable. Connecting with people is incredibly difficult, I wanted to see Craig win even if I wouldn’t want to be friends with him personally. And anytime he didn’t win (which is frequent in Friendship), I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. Life is weird how we’re just thrown into things and there’s a certain socially acceptable, binary way of living while we’re all extremely different from one another and offer completely different things to each other.

To that extent, even if there were elements of Friendship I found exhausting, the other elements elevated it to the same, yet opposite, levels. There was a cohesion to this film that is rare to find in films from sketch comedy regulars. For example, while I love films like Stepbrothers, Wayne’s World, or Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, the bits in those movies act as a way to get laughs rather than something that coexists with the world in their respective films. In Friendship you find a collection of bits that feels like it belongs to the world being built. The one bit I’ll mention, as to not spoil anything, is the “Marvel” bit that they’ve already pushed in their marketing. Once the “Marvel” is introduced it is integrated effectively and not seen as just a one-off. There’s a particular moment involving a client meeting where the bit isn’t directly referenced but is alluded to and the pay off is incredible.

Rarely does a film come around where I feel so starkly conflicted about it. And even with that, I really want to see it again. If you’re not a fan of the Tim Robinson style of comedy, this is probably the last thing you should consider if you’re looking to change that. But if you’re already a fan, this is a four course meal and then some. This film is nuclear levels of hilarious and simultaneously the worst trip imaginable. Friendship absolutely rules and should be seen in the largest and most uncomfortably crowded room imaginable. Excited to tell my therapist about this film!

Grade: C+