Coming Home
Spanning nearly 30 years, the artistic partnership between actress Gong Li and celebrated director Zhang Yimou is one of the most celebrated in modern cinema. That said, it's been almost a decade since they last worked together so the title of this statuesque meditation on age, memory, solace and suffering is particularly apt.
Starting in 1976, the last year of the Cultural Revolution, then skipping forward to 1979 and beyond, it follows the life of Yu (Gong Li), a teacher whose academic husband Lu (Chen Daoming) has been imprisoned for a decade. When he's finally released, he returns to find that she's suffering from amnesia and doesn't remember him. With the help of their daughter Dandan, Lu tries to help Yu recover her memories, but all Yu knows is that she has to be at the station on the fifth of the month to meet Lu on his return. That turns into the fifth of every month. Lu goes with her, but of course the Lu of Yu's imagination never turns up. Given the political backdrop, it's easy to read Coming Home as metaphor, but thanks to Gong Li's extraordinary performance it's equally powerful as domestic drama and bittersweet love story.
GFT February 28 and March 1
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