Brief History of a Family

Watched this movie at the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFES Watched this movie at the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFES).

The saying "parents' only treasure is their child" doesn't apply here. This Chinese film critiques the One Child Policy, showing how parents place all their hopes and ambitions on a single child, only to face disillusionment.

The story revolves around a couple who, instead of focusing on their own son, start treating his friend as their own. The film gives off a Parasite-like vibe.

However, the open-ended climax left me confused. Even though I understood the theme, I couldn't fully grasp the ending-partly because the uncle sitting next to me got a phone call at that crucial moment!

The young loner "Yuan Sho" (Xilun Sun) has an incident at school that sees him helped by the "Wei" (Muran Lin) who takes him to the nurse. That's the start of a friendship that sees the injured lad introduced to his friend's kindly mum (Ke-Yu Guo) and rather aloof scientist dad (Feng Zu) who take a shine to him as his vulnerability awakens hitherto subdued feelings with the adults whom, it emerges, might have liked more than just the one son - but who had to adhere to the prevailing one-child policy of the time. "Yuan Sho" clearly has baggage of his own and as the story unfolds you might expect it to take a predictable route, but it doesn't. Indeed, as the plot develops and we learn more about what makes these characters tick, it starts to become quite an enigmatic story where uncertainty creeps in and stirs up the mix nicely as we head to a conclusion that is, in itself, inconclusive. It's the effort from Xilun Sun that delivers best here, and with plenty of Bach mixed into a story of parental ambition, teenage indifference and just an hint of what might or might not be manipulation, we are left with a psychologically layered story with a bit of a difference.

Watched this at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Filmmaker Jianjie Lin creates a strong debut story with amazing camerawork, interesting writing and characters, and good ambitious approaches to the themes and setting. Lin does a good job on approaching the themes of the one-child policy effect, the character's personalities and ambitious, and the settings the narrative is exploring with. China's one-child policy is an interesting and difficult topic to explore and the movie does a good job on handling it's themes and style with the writing that feels interesting and engaging.

The camerawork, production, and the sound designs are really good and there were certain colorful choices that reminded me a lot of Wong Kar-wai in a good way. Many of the performances are pretty good as there are good family dynamics explored within one another.

The soundtrack and sound designs are good, the dialogue, while at times feel a little clunky, the visual presentations, and the camerawork is simply gorgeous to look at. There were a few certain aspects on the narrative that were a little strange but overall, I really liked it.

Art-house Chinese movies from Mainland China are not often discussed and I love to see more Chinese filmmakers branching out into the art-house world.