Giving the traditional, star-driven period epic a gloss-coating of topicality, Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s “She’s Got No Name” is based on a notorious real-life murder case that unfolded against the turbulent backdrop of 1940s China. And although it’s probably most notable for providing Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi with a remarkably de-glammed central role, it is the setting, rather than the sincere but only tentatively feminist storyline, that will likely give this handsome, lengthy movie its international appeal. The recreation of mid-century Shanghai remains impressive even as Chan’s evident admiration for his heroine’s survival instinct starts to become rote, locking Zhang into a screenplay (co-written by Shi Ling, Jiang Feng, Shang Yang and Pan Yi-ran) that gives plenty of depth to her character’s anguish, but little breadth to grow.
Zhang plays Zhan-Zhou, a poor, illiterate working-class woman with a birthmark grazing her forehead and cheek, whom we meet as she scurries from her alley tenement and onto a trolley car, trying to avoid attention. She is clutching a large canvas bag, stained by a spreading bloodstain — from the beginning, there is little doubt that she committed the crime for which she will soon be arrested by showboating Deputy Police Commissioner Xue (Lei Jia-yin): that of murdering and dismembering her husband (Wang Chuan-jun). His head, and a fish knife used in the killing, will never be recovered.
When Zhan-Zhou killed her pawnbroker-turned-luc.
