Summary
Art imitates life in this deeply personal and meditative reflection from a filmmaker in exile. Filled with long shots, the measured pace lets us get to know these characters as they get to know each other.
Director Ying Liang’s 2012 film When Night Falls, loosely based on the real-life case of a Chinese man who killed six policemen after he was harassed by them, resulted in Liang’s own threats of arrest by Chinese authorities upon its release. In A FAMILY TOUR (自由行), Ying fictionalises his own exile in a very personal narrative.
Ying projects himself onto filmmaker Yang Shu (portrayed by Chan Wai), who has also been exiled to Hong Kong following the release of a subversive film five years earlier. Separated from her mother Chen Xialon (Gong Zhe), she travels with her husband to Taiwan for a complicated reunion. As the ailing Chen Xialon can only travel under the watchful eyes of an organised tour, Yang Shu must steal moments with her mother as they make pit-stops along the way.
Adapting his own short film I Have Nothing To Say into a feature, with his wife Peng Shan and novelist Chan Wai as co-writers, Ying’s six years of living in Hong Kong gives him an outsiders perspective on the bureaucratic system. As someone says of his fictionalised proxy, “You haven’t been an ordinary Chinese daughter for a long time.”
Nai An (Girls Always Happy) is excellent as the exhausted Yang Shu, carrying the anxiety of not being in her home while being admired as a filmmaker abroad. Yet it’s Gong Zhe (Trouble Makers) as her ailing mother who quietly commands every scene that she is in. The most revealing moments between the two of them come from what is not being said, as their brief snatches of interaction expose some of the assumed resentment that has underlined their shared trauma. Towards the end of the film, there’s a moment where they sit together in a tour bus, a powerful moment where this subtext becomes tangible.
Filled with long takes, something that is winkingly referenced by a cab driver in the film, the measured pace of the film allows for an intimacy rarely seen in a family drama. Although much shorter than some of its contemporaries, it follows the trend of “slow cinema” by allowing audiences to soak in every one of cinematographer Otsuka Ryuji’s (The Foolish Bird) shots.
Playing within the context of a film festival, as will be the case with most viewings of this film, the act of watching a film can be as much of a political act as making one. Indeed, speaking to the disappearance of indie film festivals in China, Yang Shu carries the bags and ephemera of long defunct events and festivals. Referencing the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement – and at the time of writing, political protests in Hong Kong are playing out as mass airport sit-ins – A FAMILY TOUR shows that sometimes the very act of maintaining a family can be political statement.
2018 | Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia| DIR: Ying Liang | WRITER: Chan Wai, Ying Liang | CAST: An Nai, Pete Teo, Xin Yue Tham, Zhe Gong | DISTRIBUTOR: Golden Scene Company (World Sales), Melbourne International Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 – 18 August 2019 (AUS)
