Father (2000 film)

Plot

Father documents the tumultuous relationship between a widowed father, Ma Lisheng, and his school-age son, Ma Che. Though he works as a low-level party functionary during the day, he finds his greatest challenges in the raising of a son on his own. Alternating between trying to bond with his son (even getting drunk with him), and verbally accosting him, Ma is at a loss. One day the son decides that the best way for his father to stop harassing him, will be to find him a new wife, which he finds in the form of the mother of a school friend, Qing Huaiyuan.

Cast

Reception

Never officially released in China, Father was not screened in the west until four years after its completion in February 1996. The film was smuggled into Switzerland for the Locarno International Film Festival by the festival director Marco Muller, and would go on to win that festival's top prize, the Golden Leopard. The festival's jury chairman, Naum Klejman described Wang Shuo's film as "not only a very important film in the context of new cinema, in China and all over the world, it's also a film which gives a very human explanation of developing the societies in the world, it's universal."

Many critics, however, gave only measured praise. Derek Elley of Variety wrote that the film's two-part structure (the drama of the father-son relationship versus the broader comedy of the romance between Ma Lingyuan and Qi Huaiyuan) left the film a "little uneven in tone...," ultimately "los[ing] its focus in the final reels."