Coming Home

Once a firebrand dramatist from the post-Cultural Revolution “Fifth Generation” of Chinese filmmakers who was responsible for movies like Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou, director Yimou Zhang has been tied to more populist genres in recent years. He spent most of this millennium wrapped up in Wuxia with films like Hero and House of the Flying Daggers, and he's also dabbled in international productions (the ill-conceived The Flowers of War) and reached beyond the Chinese borders for source material (the Blood Simple remake A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop). His latest film Coming Home is something of a return to his roots, a family drama seething with undertones of sociopolitical frustration, more reserved than his early work but with characteristic gushes of emotion. The incomparable Gong Li plays a damaged woman whose psychic amnesia prevents her from recognizing her own husband, a recently released political prisoner. D.B.