China Tells

Movie Review – Shower – Zhang Yang (1999)

This film by Zhang Yang tells the story of a Shenzhen businessman who returns home to Beijing thinking his father – who runs a bathhouse – has died. It turns out, however, to just be a ruse used by his mentally retarded brother to get him home. Given his father’s failing health, the central character has to take stock of his family and future.

The director makes good use of cinematic space to show the two separate worlds of the sophisticated Shenzhenite and the more rough-cut father and son and as the movie progresses, uses it to convey how those worlds move closer.