While making his way through the austere Kekexili region of the Tibetan plateau, a rugged truck driver accidentally runs over a sheep. Shortly thereafter, he picks up a dagger-bearing hitchhiker who claims to be on his way to kill his father’s murderer. The soon-to-be-entwined fates of these two men are signaled by a strange if obvious coincidence: They’re both named Jinpa. So begins the new feature from the Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, a parable-like story about the workings of karma and destiny.
The plot is fairly straightforward: After dropping off the hitchhiker, the truck driver (played by an actor also named Jinpa) takes the dead sheep to a monastery to have its soul blessed; he has preoccupied, unsatisfying sex with a lover; and then he searches for his hitchhiking namesake, hoping perhaps to stop him from committing murder. These sequences are padded with droll details and detours. The truck driver, who sports spiky hair, a leather jacket and sunglasses, listens to a Tibetan version of “O Sole Mio” on repeat. Later, in a modest highlight, he indulges in an extended flirtation with a bartender (Sonam Wangmo) whose every word and gesture drips with innuendo.
As amusing as these interludes are, they read as attempts to force an exaggerated sense of mystery into an ultimately simple and moralistic tale about the futility of vengeance. The cinematography by Lu Songye compounds this pointless affectation. Shooting from oblique angles in a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, he deploys light, shadow and careful calibrations of focus to atmospheric effect, but these stylistic flourishes don’t communicate much beyond a generic art-house sensibility.
Jinpa
Not rated. In Tibetan, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
