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Coming Home

Posted on December 11, 2016May 17, 2022 by Village Vidiot

“Coming Home,” December 11, 2016 (2014), DVD, home [Chinese/subtitled.  One of my all-time favorite living actresses, Li Gong (Feng) stars with Chen Daoming (Lu) in this Zhang Yimou drama of political oppression, love, amnesia, and devotion in post-Maoist China. Lu is an academic sent down on trumped-up charges as a rightist during the Cultural Revolution and, having escaped, he is shopped by his daughter DanDan (Zhang Huiwen, daughter of the director?) to the police in order that she might get a big role in the ballet company she’s in. It doesn’t happen, but eventually Lu is released and he returns to find his wife devotedly waiting for him but suffering from an injury that bars her from recognizing him.   The film chronicles his efforts to break through to her and the decisions he has to make. It often verges on melodrama but doesn’t quite cross over.  That’s a good thing, too. It also uses personal amnesia to suggest the forgetfulness and lost memory of the entire Cultural Revolution. The personal is truly political. This is well worth watching as a piece of work that goes to emotional depths without going over-the-top to get there.

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