So Long, My Son (2019)

Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.

Director:

Xiaoshuai Wang

Writers:

Mei Ah, Xiaoshuai Wang

Stars:

Liya Ai, Jiang Du, Zhao-Yan Guo-Zhang

4 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Liya Ai	...	Haiyan Li
Jiang Du	...	Hao Shen
Zhao-Yan Guo-Zhang	...	Xinjian Zhang
Jingjing Li	...	Meiyu Gao
Xi Qi	...	Moli Shen
Jingchun Wang	...	Yaojun Liu
Roy Wang	...	Xing Liu
Cheng Xu	...	Yingming Shen
Mei Yong	...	Liyun Wang

Storyline

'We're waiting to grow old'. This sentence briefly sums up Yaoyun and his wife Liyun's bitter realization about their lives. They were once a happy family - until their son drowned playing by a reservoir. And so Yaojun and Liyun leave their home and plunge into the big city, although nobody knows them there and they cannot even understand the local dialect. Their adopted son Liu Xing does not offer them the comfort they had hoped for either. Defiantly rejecting his 'foreign' parents, he one day disappears altogether. The married couple are repeatedly enmeshed in their memories. Finally, they decide to return to the site of their lost hopes. In this family saga spanning three decades of Chinese history, the private and the political merge and the individual gets caught up in the gears of a society in the throes of constant change. Part melodrama, part critique of the times, this film takes us from the country's upheaval in the 1980s following the Cultural Revolution to the prospering ...

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Plot Keywords:

china | 1980s | non linear | nonlinear timeline | flashback | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

China

Language:

Chinese

Release Date:

22 March 2019 (China)

Also Known As:

So Long, My Son

Company Credits

Production Co:

Dongchun Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

185 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film explores the consequences across three decades of China's onetime one-child policy which lasted from 1979-2013.

User Reviews

An overlong and chaotic period drama

Wang Xiaoshuai is clearly a narcissist and just puts every shot into the film. If you cannot sleep well and really need some sleep, you are encouraged to see the film. It can cure the worst insomnia. The nonlinear structure is just a joke. If you put the key scenes in the beginning, every suspense would be eliminated. The editing is a mess. The film is simply unwatchable. I'm sure you would want to leave before it ends. Thematically, it is quite confusing too. It could have been a sharp and dark period drama just like Zhang Yimou's To Live.