''Coming Home'' () is a 2014 Chinese

historical drama A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romance film, romances, adventure f ...

film directed by

Zhang Yimou Zhang Yimou (; born 2 April 1950) is a Chinese film director, producer, writer, actor and former cinematographer.Tasker, Yvonne (2002). "Zhang Yimou" i''Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers'' Routledge Publishing, p. 412. . Google Book Search. Retriev ...

and starring

Chen Daoming Chen Daoming (born 26 April 1955) is a Chinese actor who has starred in various genres of film and television series. Career Chen graduated from the Central Academy of Drama. His first notable role was "Puyi" (the last emperor of China) in the ...

and

Gong Li Gong Li (Chinese: 巩俐; born 31 December 1965) is a Chinese actress. She starred in three of the four Chinese-language films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Gong was born in Shenyang, Liaoni ...

. It was released in the US on September 11, 2015, and first shown to the public on the May 20, 2014, at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

. The story is adapted from the novel ''The Criminal Lu Yanshi'' written by novelist

Geling Yan Geling Yan (; born 16 November 1958) is a Chinese-American author and screenwriter. Early life Yan was born in Shanghai, China in 1958. She is the second child of Yan Dunxun and Jia Lin. She has an elder brother Yan Geping (严歌平). Her fath ...

Plot

Lu Yanshi was a professor before being sent to the

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...

. He escapes from the labor camp in

Xining Xining (; ), alternatively known as Sining, is the capital of Qinghai province in western China and the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. The city was a commercial hub along the Northern Silk Road's Hexi Corridor for over 2000 years, and wa ...

to meet his long-missed wife Feng Wanyu and daughter Dandan. However, the police were already waiting outside the house to arrest him. Dandan, a teenage ballerina, could not play the leading role in '' Red Detachment of Women'' due to her father's outlaw status. Under the temptation of regaining the leading role, Dandan reveals her parents' secret meeting plan to the police. The meeting ends with the capture of Lu, but Dandan still does not get the leading role. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Lu comes home only to find his family broken- his wife suffering from amnesia and his daughter working as a textile worker. Under the shock of a former official's sexual harassment, his wife sometimes mistakes Lu as Officer Fang instead of her husband. To reawaken his wife's memory, Lu disguises himself as a stranger so he can be near his wife. She recognizes him only as a letter reader or a piano tuner, and he never could live close enough with his chaste wife because of her trauma. During these years, Lu continued to write to his wife as a way of communicating with her and to convince her to forgive their daughter. Several years later Feng is waiting to receive her husband outside the railway station on a snowy day, and Lu is standing with her, pretending to be a pedicab driver.

Cast

as Lu Yanshi *

as Feng Wanyu, Lu Yanshi's wife *

Zhang Huiwen Zhang Huiwen (, born 13 September 1993) is a Chinese actress. She received widespread media attention after debuting in Zhang Yimou's film '' Coming Home'' (2014), and is also noted for her roles in ''Nirvana in Fire 2'', '' The Flaming Heart'' ...

as Dandan, Yanshi and Wanyu's daughter * Guo Tao *

Liu Peiqi Liu Peiqi (; born 30 November 1957) is a Chinese actor. He started his training in 1979 when he joined Military Art School. He joined Military Drama Group in Xinjiang Province in 1983. In 1985 he starred in his first movie, ''Father and Son'', di ...

Zu Feng Zu Feng (; born 23 February 1974) is a Chinese actor and director. Zu first attracted attention in 2008 for his role as Li Ya in the successful TV drama '' Lurk''. He has earned and been nominated for numerous awards during his career, includi ...

* Yan Ni *Xin Baiqing *Zhang Jiayi *Chen Xiaoyi *

Ding Jiali Ding Jiali (; born 16 December 1959) is a Chinese actress. Her career accolades include two Plum Blossom Prizes and Golden Rooster Awards, a Hundred Flowers Award, Flying Apsaras Award, Huabiao Award, Golden Phoenix Award, Chinese Film Medi ...

Production

The film was shot in

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

and

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

Releases

''Coming Home'' had its international premiere at the

2014 Cannes Film Festival The 67th Cannes Film Festival was held from 14 to 25 May 2014. New Zealand film director Jane Campion was the head of the jury for the main competition section. The Palme d'Or was awarded to the Turkish film '' Winter Sleep'' directed by Nuri Bi ...

in the out of competition section. It was scheduled to be screened in the Special Presentations section of the

2014 Toronto International Film Festival The 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival, the 39th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held in Canada from 4–14 September 2014. David Dobkin's film '' The Judge'', starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duv ...

Reception

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has a rating of 89% based on 80 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The rare tearjerking melodrama with sociopolitical subtext, ''Coming Home'' plucks the heartstrings with thought-provoking power." According to

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which sampled 21 critics and calculated a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, the film received "universal acclaim".

Box office

The film grossed ¥23.7 million (US$3.80 million) on the first day in China and reached US$46,000,000. It earned a total of internationally.

References

External links

* * * * * * {{Navboxes , title = Awards for ''Coming Home'' , list = {{Golden Lotus Award for Best Picture {{Hong Kong Film Award for Best Film from Mainland and Taiwan 2014 drama films 2014 films Chinese drama films Films directed by Zhang Yimou Films based on Chinese novels Films about the Cultural Revolution Films shot in Beijing Films shot in Tianjin Chinese independent films IMAX films Le Vision Pictures films Films with screenplays by Zou Jingzhi 2014 independent films 2010s Mandarin-language films