The Berlin Film festival Golden Bear winner is a Chinese film noir featuring supreme performances from actors Liao Fan (who won the Silver Bear for best actor in Berlin) and Gwei Lun-Mei. Fan plays a disgraced alcoholic cop from a small town who returns to sleuthing when a murder happens that seems oddly similar to the case that caused his downfall five years previously. Director Yi'nan Diao (Shower, Night Train) takes things slowly and creates tension by making the situations as authentic as possible. Of course being a noir, everything seems to revolve around a femme fatale (Gwei Lun-Mei). The coal in the title is a reference to where dismembered human remains take place and the thin ice, is both literal and metaphorical. The denouement is in the best traditions of Raymond Chandler, the Berlin prize and the many plaudits since are recognition of the inventive scenes in which Diao reinterprets staples of the genre. *
• Tuesday, October 28, 9.30pm, Vox 5; Thursday, October 30, 7pm, Vox 3
