Movies
The Road Home
The peak of Shanghai Triad in the directing career of Zhang Yimou looks from here a long ways off in the distance. Zhang Ziyi, the doll-faced fighting machine of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, plays an unlettered Chinese peasant who, in the olden days of arranged marriages (1958), sets her cap for the gangling new schoolteacher from the big city. And why not? The camera loves her. The director clearly loves her. (Who needs Gong Li?) Why shouldn't the schoolteacher fall in line? Well: "This teacher is out of our class," warns granny. But the flashback structure, with a present-day frame in black-and-white and a running narration, removes all suspense, leaving only pretty landscapes, pretty sentiments, and that pretty face. Plus some nice brief scenes of handiwork: an itinerant pottery repairman nailing together a broken bowl, and the heroine whipping up her culinary specialties (onion cakes, mushroom dumplings) or decorating the classroom with paper cutouts. "Pretty" and "nice" seem to be the strongest compliments possible. 2000.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: G
