Jinpa

Pema Tseden’s darkly comic fable confirms his evolution away from the neorealist-style narratives of his earlier films. Part–road movie, part–Tibetan Western, Jinpa is a tale of two lonely travellers, both named Jinpa. They meet on a mountain road in the Kekexili highlands on the Qinghai–Tibet plateau. One of the Jinpas (played by Pema Tseden’s go-to leading man, also named Jinpa) is a truck driver (and fancier of Neapolitan song). He is upset he has accidentally struck and killed a sheep. He picks up a second, brooding Jinpa, who announces he is on a search for the killer of his father.We follow the first Jinpa to a monastery, and then along a winding route leading him to a butcher, to his lover, and finally to a saloon presided over by a sultry barmaid (played by an incandescent Sonam Wangmo).

Eventually, as the two men’s stories, dreams, and fates intertwine, weighty moral questions of karma and compassion hang in the balance. Jinpa is produced by Hong Kong filmmaking icon Wong Kar Wai and filmed by the great DP Lü Songye in fantastically warped Academy ratio photography.

May 16: In conversation with Compassionate Light curator Shelly Kraicer and Professor Tsering Shakya, Canada Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia, UBC

Playful, gently perplexing and distinctly stylish. Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily

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