SHOWN as a surprise film and a late entry at the 2006 Venice festival, Still Life surprised most people when the jury presented Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke with the Golden Lion for best film, despite formidable competition from Children of Men, The Queen and Black Book.

It would appear that the jury, chaired by Catherine Deneuve, gave the award to Jia because of the socially concerned themes raised by his movie rather than for their cinematic treatment.

Jia's film deals with the dislocation of some of the million people who had to move home when an ancient Sichuan village on the Yangtze River was flooded for the massive Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project. Blurring the distinction between documentary and fictional cinema, this bleak movie could most kindly be described as an observational picture of quotidian behaviour.

Still Life is an appropriate title, given that nothing much happens. As it follows a coal miner's search for his ex-wife and daughter, whom he has not seen in 16 years, the man walks around a lot, takes several ferry trips, and there is copious noodle-eating and smoking. In the second half, a nurse is seeking out her errant husband. She also does a good deal of walking around, pausing regularly to drink from a bottle of water and to refill it.

The quests of these two thinly drawn characters are set against a background of upheaval in the lives of poor people during a period of demolition and displacement. There are some striking HD visual compositions in this ponderous, dramatically inert film.