The Movie Waffler New Release Review - BRIEF HISTORY OF A FAMILY | The Movie Waffler

New Release Review - BRIEF HISTORY OF A FAMILY

Brief History of a Family review
middle-class Chinese family is plunged into turmoil when they take in their son's mysterious new friend.

Review by Eric Hillis

Directed by: Lin Jianjie

Starring: Zu Feng, Guo Keyu, Sun Xilun, Lin Muran

Brief History of a Family poster

Arriving in the wake of the derivative Saltburn, writer/director Lin Jianjie's feature debut Brief History of a Family might seem at first glance to be simply another riff on the Boudu Saved from Drowning/Teorema template of a middle class family being disrupted by the arrival of an enigmatic figure in their well-manicured home. But Jianjie's film gradually reveals itself to be an interesting variation on this theme, one which is culturally rooted in the specifics of modern China.

Brief History of a Family review

One of the first shots we see in Brief History of a Family is a biological cell viewed through a microscope. When another molecule comes into contact with the cell, it causes disruption. Maintaining the microscope's iris as a framing device, Jianjie cuts to a shot of the Tus, the middle class family whose lives will be similarly upended by the arrival of an outside force.


That disruptive force is 15-year-old Shuo (Sun Xilun), a quiet boy who is befriended by the Tus directionless slacker son Wei (Lin Muran). When Wei brings his new friend home for dinner, his parents - credited only as Mr (Zu Feng) and Mrs Tu (Guo Keyu) - are immediately charmed. Shuo is everything their own son isn't: studious, well-behaved and devoted to self-improvement. When Shuo reveals the details of his terrible home life, where he claims to be regularly beaten by his alcoholic father, the Tus invite the boy to spend more time with them, ultimately moving the boy into their home in the wake of a tragedy.

Brief History of a Family review

Many of the early plot beats of Brief History of a Family will be familiar to anyone who has seen such dramas before, or even a few Lifetime thrillers with similar starting points. Shuo seems to quickly figure out which buttons to press when it comes to endearing himself to his would-be new family. He appeals to Mr Tu's intellect, impressing him with his knowledge of classical music (shades of Daryl McCormack in the recent British thriller The Lesson), and he plays on Mrs Tu's maternal longing for a second child.


Where Jianjie's film deviates from its predecessors is in how it refuses to frame the middle class Tus as the villains of the piece simply because of their elevated social status. The movie comes to focus on the effect China's infamous one-child policy (rescinded in 2016) has had on the family, making it clear that Mrs Tu would have loved to have had more children. For all their wealth, the Tus have been denied the one thing they wanted most in the world, another child. Where most arthouse movies about working class heroes unravelling the lives of a middle class family are designed to make us root against the latter, here we simply feel sorry for the Tus. At the same time, as the narrative progresses and Shuo burrows deeper into their familial bosom, we begin to wonder who is really taking advantage of whom.

Brief History of a Family review

For those of us in the West, modern China can seem like a glimpse of, or perhaps a warning from the future, a technologically advanced society that seems to have taken a toll on individuality. Jianjie leans heavily into this idea, framing his characters against a background that could be considered either glistening or clinical, all gleaming surfaces and flashing gizmos. There are moments in his film that might be mistaken for scenes from a dystopian sci-fi thriller, none more so than a striking shot of Mr Tu standing with dozens of other parents in a queue to register his son for English classes as a loudspeaker repeats a mantra about the importance of learning that language for a child to succeed; it's reminiscent of those floating commercials for the off-world colonies in Blade Runner. Jianjie uses technological accoutrements to add to the sense of dehumanisation, with the Tus often pictured wearing VR helmets, electrical fencing masks and giant headphones, all of which give them the look of androids drawn by some 1950s futurist. The framing of characters as insignificant figures against high-rise buildings and featureless backdrops recalls THX 1138, and Lianjie subtly suggests that his country is ruled in a similar way to the dystopian city of George Lucas's debut, keeping its people occupied with shiny distractions to erase feelings of human longing. Lianjie's debut is a silent scream from a sterile society.

Brief History of a Family is in UK cinemas from March 21st.



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