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Liang Ying (China, 1977) debuted with
Bei Yazi De Nanhai/ Taking Father Home (2005), a realistic melodrama
made with a videocamera and non-professional actors.
Yun leaves his countryside village, that is about to be evacuated by the government due to the construction of a dam, and heads for the big city.
He is determined to find his father now that they have to move.
Yun takes with him two geese in a basket and no money.
On the bus to the city he witnesses the heroic action by a man who stops
pickpocket and returns the purse stolen from a lady.
This man is actually a wanted criminal, Scar. Yun has nowhere to sleep and Scar
helps him find a vacant room. Yun insists on paying with this geese and Scar
also gives me a little money. But the room is not vacant: as soon as Scar
leaves, a young thug evicts Yun. Yun wanders in the streets until he stumbles
into the basket with the geese: Scar is nowhere to be found. Six kids on
motorcycles start circling around Yun, who is scared and speechless, not used
to defend himself from aggression. A cop comes to his rescue and takes him to
the police station. The cop advises him to go back home and takes him to
the bus stop. The radio and the street loudspeakers repeat warnings to the
citizens that they have to leave town as soon as possible
because the waters are rising.
Yun runs away and the cop chases him. Seeing how determined the kid is, the
cop accepts to help him locate his father. They walk to the address that the
man gave his wife, but the building is being demolished. The radio announces
a murder. The cop takes the kid to the river where they stare at the giant
head of a Buddha that drifted down the river from the temple. While Yun swims,
a group of motorcycle thugs viciously attacks the cop, who is almost killed.
Yun visits him at the hospital and the cop whispers to Yun to leave town.
Yun is about to do so when he overhears the phone conversation of a woman:
she is talking to his dad. Yun follows the woman and her daughter all the
way to her home until his father shows up. Understanding that he got married
to another woman, Yun doesn't reveal himself but simply kicks the door of
the house.
The city's loudspeakers now repeat the command to evacuate immediately.
The town is empty. Just then he runs into the criminal Scar, who is being
chased by police officers. They capture him and take him away.
Yun returns to his father's house and speaks to his wife. She doesn't know
where his father went. They are supposed to leave the house and are only
waiting for the head of the family to return. Yun's stepmother tells him
that his father always sent money to Yun's mom even when he was bankrupt.
Yun goes searching for his
father and finds him in the outskirts: his father is being harassed by
thugs who want him to pay his debts. Yun pulls out his knife and sends them
away. For the first time he has behave as a tough man. Yun claims to be sent
by his mother to demand that the man returns to the village. His father doesn't
recognize him, laughs away his wife's request and boasts that he owns all the land around them and some day he will be rich. Enraged, Yun kills his father
and cuts a flock of hair.
Then he finally takes the bus back home and on the bus he heroically stops
a pickpocket just like Scar did at the beginning.
At home, as the family prepares to leave the village, Yun buries the money
that Scar gave him and the flock of hair that he took for his dead father.
Ling Yi Ban/ The Other Half (2006)
Hao Mao/ Good Cats (2008)
Wo Hai You Hua Yao Shou/ When Night Falls (2012)
(Copyright © 2015 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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