Set in the early 1970s, it tells the story of a Chinese-Japanese student who returns to her native Hong Kong after graduating from a university in London. Once she arrives back home, she and her family begins to fight, largely due to cultural and societal conflicts between her mother and herself.
Director: Ann Hui. AKA Song of the Exile / 客途秋恨
Writer: Nien-Jen Wu.
Stars: Maggie Cheung, Siu-Kwong Chung, Tan Lang Jachi Tian, Waise Lee, Zi Xiong Li, Hsiao-Fen Lu, Feng Tien, Xiany Xiao, Tinlan Yang, Quinzi Yinjian.
Cinematographer: Zhiwen Zhong.
Composer: Yang Chen.
If there are perhaps hundreds of millions of dysfunctional families in the world, Ann Hui’s “Song of the Exile” does the genre proud. The film, in sometimes punishing detail, examines the relationship between a status obsessed mother who regards her beautiful educated daughter like a rich man his trophy wife. Both accuse the other of neglect and indifference. In the after math of the brutal Sino-Japanese war, mother and daughter move back to Japan where the latter gradually learns of the events that shaped her mother = 4.5 stars.
A beautiful cinema that explores cross-cultural generations, featuring a scarce and unique subject matter ~ simple in exterior but very complex and multi-layered. Thanks for uploading.
I enjoyed it even more on the 2nd viewing.
I don’t know if this film has been released on blu-ray but the low image quality on this version presumably ripped from a DVD (VCD?) just adds to the mood strangely enough. In that sense it’s far more preferable than it being ruined by the overuse of DNR-technology which Criterion has had a tendency to do in recent years