Chinese Boxes is a 1984 British-West German crime mystery thriller film directed by Chris Petit and starring Will Patton and Robbie Coltrane.[1][2] The film was partially German funded.[3]
| Chinese Boxes | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Chris Petit |
| Written by | L. M. Kit Carson Chris Petit |
| Produced by | Chris Sievernich |
| Starring | Will Patton Robbie Coltrane |
| Cinematography | Peter Harvey |
| Edited by | Fred Srp |
| Music by | Günther Fischer |
Production companies | AAA Classics Palace Production Road Movies Filmproduktion |
| Distributed by | Palace Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 87 minutes |
| Countries | United Kingdom West Germany |
| Language | English |
Filming for Chinese Boxes was filmed in East Berlin during 1984. The film's score was composed by a Stasi informer who also lived in East Berlin.[4]
Chinese Boxes premiered on 29 November 1984 in the United Kingdom.[citation needed] Years later the movie was screened in 2013 as part of Petit's Museum of Loneliness project, also in the United Kingdom.[5]
Critical reception was generally favorable.[6] Derek Malcolm reviewed Chinese Boxes for The Guardian, commenting that it "looks good and is at least lively".[7] The Independent remarked that the movie was "a quintessential Eighties riddle-thriller with a hint of Godard's Made in USA in its comic-strip flatness: it features a showdown in a paper-pulping yard, a foretaste of Petit's later preoccupation with pulped and discarded culture."[8]
Chinese Boxes has also received a 2013 review from Chris Darke in Sight & Sound.[9]