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James Marsh

3/5 stars
A righteous public security officer embarks on a 40-year game of cat and mouse with a suspected Kuomintang sleeper agent in I Know Who You Are, a sporadically entertaining historical drama by Feng Xiaogang.
Lei Jiayin stars as Xiao Dali, a stubborn Chinese official convinced his next-door neighbour is a spy, while Hu Ge plays Feng Jingbo, who sees his secret mission repeatedly eclipsed by growing commitments to a community in rapid transition.
Adapted from Zhang Ce’s novella No Regrets Tracking, the drama unfolds against a backdrop of seismic national upheaval, starting with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and encompassing the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and sweeping economic reform.


Throughout all this, Dali and Jingbo live side by side, their lives becoming increasingly and irreversibly intertwined.
Both men live in the same Beijing hutong, where Dali is instantly suspicious of Jingbo, who has been hired as the new mathematics teacher at the local primary school.
To observe his target, Dali moves into the same building as the teacher. While confused by some of Jingbo’s behaviour – not least his fixation on radio reports about Hong Kong vegetable prices – he struggles to find irrefutable evidence.
The radio transmissions are, in fact, coded messages from Jingbo’s superiors, to which he responds using a hidden transmitter.
Over time, the broadcasts become less frequent, but Dali’s suspicions never subside – not even when Jingbo asks him to play matchmaker for him and Liu Yemei (Zhang Yao), a proudly loyal member of the country’s growing political movement, whom he later marries.

As the years pass, Jingbo becomes a respected and influential member of the community, and his secret political affiliations fade, while Dali’s behaviour leans ever further into self-destructive obsession.
The two men’s families become close, especially after both men have children who form strong, lasting bonds, but when Jingbo eventually slips up, his nemesis is waiting to pounce.
I Know Who You Are adopts a refreshingly level-headed and pragmatic approach to an issue that has divided families and communities for decades.
Feng even has the temerity to suggest a man’s past might be forgiven, or at least forgotten, if he is willing to contribute to the greater good – an argument fuelled by a pair of contrasting yet equally compelling performances.

Ultimately, however, the film insists justice must be served via a jarring, tacked-on denouement that attempts to have its cake and eat it too.
It is a cynical and unsatisfying coda to a film that for much of its running time succeeds as an absorbing, if somewhat sanitised, exploration of a nation’s splintered and evolving ideological past.
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Feng Xiaogang’s drama set during the early years of the People’s Republic of China entertains but is let down by an unsatisfying ending


Feng Xiaogang’s drama set during the early years of the People’s Republic of China entertains but is let down by an unsatisfying ending.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Feng Xiaogang’s drama set during the early years of the People’s Republic of China entertains but is let down by an unsatisfying ending

Feng Xiaogang’s drama set during the early years of the People’s Republic of China entertains but is let down by an unsatisfying ending