A single marriage stands in for a national tragedy. When director Yimou Zhang took on The Rape of Nanking in The Flowers of War, he proportioned the look and feel of his film to the event: florid, unrestrained, unsubtle as a bayonet to the crotch. Here, he's treating China's cultural amnesia in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, and so everything gets muted, restrained, and pressed down for packing away. (Party red may be only color that remains in the viewer's memory after watching.) The result is much less shocking than his previous effort, but no less heartbreaking. The brisk opening gives us Lu, a political prisoner who has escaped and is attempting to reach his wife Feng and daughter Dan Dan. The terrified Feng longs for reunion, but the resentful Dan Dan thinks more of her State-sanctioned ballet career. Lu is recaptured, and when he is finally released, he comes home to a wife who does not recognize him. Some trauma has robbed her of memory, and Lu is encouraged to work towards its restoration. What follows is a crucible of patient, intimate suffering that forms Lu in unexpected, but not unbelievable fashion. "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds..." (2014) — Matthew Lickona
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