COMING HOME (GUI LAI)
DIRECTOR: Zhang Yimou
CAST: Gong Li, Chen Daoming, Huiwen Zhang
CLASSIFICATION: 7-9 PG
RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes
RATING: ***
INCREDIBLY sad, this Chinese art film is a haunting, beautifully filmed story about love, home and family.
Betrayal, familial responsibility and bonds are recognisable themes, but these are slightly twisted outside of the normal Hollywood standard because of the setting.
Starting off in ’70s China, it presents a fascinating insight into Chinese suburban life as well as a slightly disturbing take on what it felt like to live under the rule of Mao and his little red book.
The expectations placed upon the people because of Party politics feels foreign and artificial to an audience used to freedom of individual expression, but like Child 44, Coming Home provides an in into a way of life completely governed by a regimented social policy that dictated every move had to be within the collective.
Xiaoding Zhao’s cinematography evokes the drabness of communist China, leaving it up to the people to provide the sparks of colour.
Director Yimou again uses his muse Li (pictured) to great effect. She is Feng Wanyu, devoted wife to Lu Yanshi (Daoming) and mother to Dan Dan (Zhang). Li is luminescent, creating a nuanced character who evinces sadness, confusion and longing. As her character ages her movement changes appropriately, but the grace remains and the copious close-ups allow us to see in minute detail how she ages (by bravely dropping the make-up as the story progresses).
The couple are separated when he is sent to a labour camp as a political prisoner. This being the last days of the Cultural Revolution, he eventually gets sent home, but she has had an accident and now suffers from amnesia.
Wanyu spends her days waiting for her beloved husband to come home, he spends his days trying to remind her of who he is. As he finds out more about what has happened to her over the years he strikes up a relationship with his now grown up daughter, who has a contentious relationship with her mother, complicating matters in unexpected and sad ways.
Daoming turns in a powerful performance as the intellectual-turned-labourer struggling to awaken the wife he remembers in this stranger, while Zhang ably brings across resentment and childish stubbornness as the daughter.
Events are repeated in slightly different ways, dragging out the story unnecessarily – the film is entirely in Chinese, subtitled in English, but the words “Gui Lai” are repeated so often in various contexts that you come to understand the variety of meanings to the phrase which literally translates to “coming home” or “return”.
Eventually all the repetition just starts to grind and you want it to be over, but the overall effect that stays with you afterwards is the sadness of this woman waiting for her husband, never recognising him right in front of her.
If you liked Raise the Red Lantern or Dearest, you will like this.