Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Father (1996)
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
'Bad-boy' novelist Wang Shuo ran headlong into the brick wall of Film Bureau censorship with this adaptation of his own 1991 novel I'm Your Dad. The film was not seen anywhere until an English subtitled print was smuggled to Europe in 2000 for festival screenings. Ma Linsheng (Feng, also the co-writer and designer) is a minor Party functionary, a recent widower sharing his old Beijing courtyard apartment with his schoolboy son Ma Che (Hu). The first hour explores the generation gap, attitude gap and emotional tensions between father and son with a fair degree of wit and sympathy for both sides. But everything falls apart after the boy pushes his father into a second marriage. The film loses touch with recognisable realities and lapses into over-heated rhetoric and fantasy. Still, some of the satire bites.Author: TR
Cast & crew
Producer: Han Sanping, Wang Weijing
Cast: Feng Xiaogang, Hu Xiaopei, Xu Fan, Qin Yan, Wang Weining full cast
Duration: 96 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now