Coming Home (2014)
Director: Yimou Zhang
Country: China
Runtime:109min
Country: China
Runtime:109min
The ghosts of China's
cultural revolution shake their chains and rattle their ivories in
Coming Home, a sweet yet suspect romantic drama from director Zhang
Yimou, which played out of competition at the Cannes film festival.
The first time Lu Yanshi (Chen Daoming) comes haunting, he's a
bedraggled, desperate fugitive; the second time, he's careworn and
rehabilitated. On each occasion, his wife finds herself unable to open
the door and let him inside.
Zhang was the leading light of China's "fifth generation" of film-makers, revered for his pungent epics To Live and Raise the Red Lantern, and subsequently brought into the fold to direct the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. His new film looks at the cultural revolution more in sorrow than anger, installing the spouses' relationship as a metaphor for the country's stumbling attempt to make peace with its past.
When Chen's dissident professor is released from jail, amnesiac Feng Wanyu (Gong Li) fails to recognise him. It is as if she is practising her own form of state censorship, or perhaps the enormity of his presence makes her unable to see him. Years before, the couples' indoctrinated daughter (Zhang Huiwen) had cut her father's face from all the photos in the family album, which means that there is no visual reminder; no proof that the man is who he claims to be. His wife looks right through him, standing forlornly at the station awaiting her husband's return.
Zhang adapts the tale from a novel by Geling Yan, who also provided the blueprint for his previous picture, The Flowers of War. He handles it sensitively, elegantly, and coaxes some affecting performances from Chen and Gong (although the latter does rather overdo the nervous head-bobbing). But the film is also sentimental and faintly evasive, replete with a plaintive piano score that all but twists our arms behind our backs. Zhang dabs on salve and comforts the afflicted. He lets this intimate, bittersweet reconciliation implicitly stand for the nation at large.
Eventually, Yanshi learns that he must approach his wife with caution, as though he's feeding birds in the garden. He pretends to be a kindly neighbour come to read her husband's letters, or a piano tuner making house-calls. The man means well; the woman's starting to thaw. But he should really have dismantled that annoying piano. It won't stop tinkling and it takes up too much space.
Zhang was the leading light of China's "fifth generation" of film-makers, revered for his pungent epics To Live and Raise the Red Lantern, and subsequently brought into the fold to direct the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. His new film looks at the cultural revolution more in sorrow than anger, installing the spouses' relationship as a metaphor for the country's stumbling attempt to make peace with its past.
When Chen's dissident professor is released from jail, amnesiac Feng Wanyu (Gong Li) fails to recognise him. It is as if she is practising her own form of state censorship, or perhaps the enormity of his presence makes her unable to see him. Years before, the couples' indoctrinated daughter (Zhang Huiwen) had cut her father's face from all the photos in the family album, which means that there is no visual reminder; no proof that the man is who he claims to be. His wife looks right through him, standing forlornly at the station awaiting her husband's return.
Zhang adapts the tale from a novel by Geling Yan, who also provided the blueprint for his previous picture, The Flowers of War. He handles it sensitively, elegantly, and coaxes some affecting performances from Chen and Gong (although the latter does rather overdo the nervous head-bobbing). But the film is also sentimental and faintly evasive, replete with a plaintive piano score that all but twists our arms behind our backs. Zhang dabs on salve and comforts the afflicted. He lets this intimate, bittersweet reconciliation implicitly stand for the nation at large.
Eventually, Yanshi learns that he must approach his wife with caution, as though he's feeding birds in the garden. He pretends to be a kindly neighbour come to read her husband's letters, or a piano tuner making house-calls. The man means well; the woman's starting to thaw. But he should really have dismantled that annoying piano. It won't stop tinkling and it takes up too much space.
