Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases


Together (2002)

Director: Chen Kaige

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Fresh from the debacle of Killing Me Softly, Chen returns to the all-male themes he's most comfortable with (fathers and sons, teachers and pupils) and turns in a slick and sentimental crowd-pleaser without a trace of the aesthetic ambition which coloured even his weakest previous work. The teenage Xiaochun (Tang), brought up in scenic Suzhou by his uneducated lone-parent dad (Liu), is a whiz on the violin. Father takes son to Beijing to seek training for his obvious talent; they wind up first with the eccentric and irascible Professor Jiang (Wang) and then with the aloof and competitive Professor Yu (Chen Kaige himself), who engineers a rivalry between the boy and his existing star pupil, a girl. Meanwhile Xiaochun finds a surrogate mother-sister in Lili (Chen Hong, the director's current wife), the outwardly hard-as-nails gold-digger who lives opposite his picturesquely squalid digs. The film aims for a tone of rhapsodic melodrama and - nauseatingly - achieves it in a climax in which victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat and Xiaochun's true origins are revealed in out of the blue flashbacks, all to a Tchaikovsky soundtrack.

Author: TR

Time Out Film Guide


What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields




Most popular on this site


Top Stories

Has David Cronenberg turned tame?

Has David Cronenberg turned tame?

Has director David Cronenberg veered too far from his radical and bloody roots with new film 'A Dangerous Method'?

The 10 worst date movies

The 10 worst date movies

Just in time for Valentine's Day, we present ten of the least romantic films ever made

Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films

Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films

Find out where to watch 2012's Oscar-nominated films in London cinemas

10 unlikely badboy biopics

10 unlikely badboy biopics

Featuring Phil Collins, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Clegg, David Starkey and a host of other unlikely subjects

Interview: Sean Durkin on 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'

Interview: Sean Durkin on 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'

The first-time director of the brilliant new thriller discusses religious cults and robot boxing

Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day

Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day

Side-step romantic clichés with some alternative Valentine’s viewing