OCTOBER 13, 2015
Melodrama has become quite a dirty word in film criticism circles. If a film is “melodramatic,” that usually translates into “wrenching tears for the cheapest possible reasons.” Yet melodrama was the backbone of the early film industry and bolstered it for many decades to come. Some of the greatest films of the 1950s were melodramas, particularly by director Douglas Sirk, who helmed such classic films as “Magnificent Obsession,” “Written on the Wind” and “Imitation of Life.”
Melodramas, however, soon began to fall out of favor, and though some would pop up now and then, it wasn’t until the success of “Ghost” (1990) and Clint Eastwood’s “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995) that the genre had a chance to revive, but it was not to last. Foreign directors were left to pick up the slack, but none landed until Zhang Yimou. Zhang seemed to understand the power of the genre but was missing his muse, Gong Li.
The director and actress had been an off-screen couple until 1995, when, after six films together (including the extraordinary “Raise the Red Lantern”), they split. Gong went on to be an international movie star (“Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Miami Vice”), while Zhang took a different route, specializing in martial-arts spectacles (“Hero,” “House of Hidden Daggers”), followed by international acclaim for producing the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Beijing Olympics.
But Zhang and Gong are back at work together at last in “Coming Home,” and the film is cause for rejoicing.
It’s the time of the Cultural Revolution in China, and college professor Lu Lanshi (Chen Daoming) has been sent to a labor camp. In an effort to reunite with his wife Feng (Gong), he escapes captivity and arranges for a rendezvous with Feng at a nearby train station. However, the couple’s teenage daughter Dan Dan (Zhang Huiwen), an aspiring ballerina who is denied lead roles because of her father’s politics, agrees to inform on her father to the state.
In a harrowing scene at the station, Feng spots her husband as well as the authorities who are hurrying to arrest him. She calls out to warn Lu, but instead of running away, he decides to run toward her. They are only feet away from embracing when Lu is caught and dragged away, and in the ensuing struggle, Feng is knocked to the ground and suffers a serious head injury.
Three years later, the Cultural Revolution is over, and Lu is about to come home. He has reconciled with his daughter, who has given up ballet to work in a textile mill, but he is most anxious to see his wife and is absolutely heartbroken when Feng, whose head injury triggered a case of amnesia, does not recognize him. (This is a melodrama, after all.) All she remembers is that her husband had promised that he would return on the 5th of the month, so each month, rain or shine, Feng is there at the station with her sign, waiting in vain for the very man who is standing right in front of her.
The station scenes are particularly powerful, due in large part to the delicate chemistry between Gong and Chen. You really believe that this couple was once hopelessly in love with one another, which makes the current situation even more poignant. Unlike his previous films with Gong, where the screen was filled with wild swatches of color, Zhang’s palette in “Coming Home” is far more muted, with browns and greys dominating the frame. Nonetheless, though you can put Gong Li in the most modest grey cloth coat, she still lights up the screen.
The quiet mood of “Coming Home” is a far cry from swashbuckling antics of Zhang’s martial-arts epics, but it exudes a power that’s much more devastating than any flying saber.
GRADE: B+
