Two short films about parents and children: Mom & Q [老妈子与秋] (2018) & Home Away [回我的家] (2018)

This review discusses two short films (both under 30 minutes) which examine issues about the relationship between parents and their children in a China where they are often apart. In Mom & Q (directed by Long Yi and Han Peng], the son lives far away for work and the mother [Wang Qiuping] lives alone in…

Day and Night [日日夜夜] (2005)

This film - made with French investment and support - is the middle film in Wang Chao's loose trilogy about life in China (between the Orphan of Anyang and the much-superior Luxury Car). Unlike, the urban-based Luxury Car, Day and Night is based in bleak Inner Mongolia. Guangsheng [Liu Lei] is working in a small…

Hello! Goodbye [你好 再见] (2018)

Set in Chengdu, Hello! Goodbye is a debut feature from director Shi Xiang (a graduate of the Radio and Film College of Chengdu University of Technology). It features three young characters wandering the streets of the city with their paths crossing from time to time. Xiaohua [Hua Maojun] has just lost his job and is…

The Enigma of Arrival [抵达之谜] (2018)

An overrated and overlong film from debut director Song Wen. It's another delayed film, initially shown in 2018 in Busan (and apparently shot in 2015) which was only released commercially in 2020. Opening in 1994, Zhao Xiaolong [Li Xian] and his friends Fang Yuan [Dong Borui], Da Si [Lin Xiaofan), and narrator San Pi [Liu…

Becoming Li Jiahe [少女佳禾] (2019)

An understated and (so far) underrated coming-of age drama by first-time feature writer and director Zhou Sun. It was shown at the FIRST Film Festival in 2019 but has only recently (December 2020) been commerically released in China. Becoming Li Jiahe (aka Summer is the Coldest Season) stars Deng Enxi (aka Ancy Deng) who looked…

Saturday Fiction [兰心大剧院] (2019)

In Saturday Fiction (Lyceum Theatre in Chinese) Lou Ye makes a break with his recent meta-noir style and returns to the scene and themes of his 2003 film Purple Butterfly: Shanghai during the War of Resistance, though this time in black and white. The film opens in 1937 when actress Jean Yu [Gong Li] and…

On the Balcony [阳台上] (2019)

An initially promising but ultimately frustrating movie from director Zhang Meng, all the more so since it largely wastes the talents of Zhou Dongyu. Zhang Yingxiong [Wang Qiang] lives with his unemployed father and his retired mother in an old building scheduled for demolition. His bad tempered father argues with the man in charge of…

Fish Park [鱼乐园] (2019)

A classic Beijing slacker movie from first-time writer-director Chai Xiaoyu. It was shown at the FIRST Film Festival in 2019. Zhang Xiaoyu [Li Boguang] has been brought up by his uncle [Liu Yuzhu] and seems to have no relationship with his dying father. His uncle gives him a job in his construction company which seems…

The Burning River [迷雾追踪] (2020)

The Burning River (Tracking through the Fog in Chinese) is YoYo's entry in the recent wave of concise crime dramas including iQiYi's Light On series. The 24 episodes (40 minutes each) were shown together in December 2020-January 2021 but effectively they consist of two series of 12 episodes with distinct stories which occur a few…

Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains [春江水暖] (2019)

A slow-moving drama of family life in Fuyang (now part of Hangzhou city) on the Fuchun river. It's a first feature from writer and director Gu Xiaogang, also from Fuyang. If you like a beautifully made, depressing, very slow-moving and overlong (2 hours 30 minutes) movie, this is for you. And its the first volume…