A 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
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.
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.
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on the effect China's infamous one-child policy (rescinded in 2016) has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.
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
on UK/ROI VOD now.
