| Coming Home | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster | |
| Traditional Chinese | 歸來 |
| Simplified Chinese | 归来 |
| Directed by | Zhang Yimou |
| Screenplay by | Zou Jingzhi |
| Based on | The Criminal Lu Yanshi byGeling Yan |
| Produced by | William Kong Zhao Zhang |
| Starring | Chen Daoming Gong Li Zhang Huiwen |
| Cinematography | Xiaoding Zhao |
| Music by | Qigang Chen |
Production company | Le Vision Pictures |
| Distributed by | Edko Films (Hong Kong) GAGA (Japan) Golden Village Pictures (Singapore) Sony Pictures Classics (USA) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 111 minutes |
| Country | China |
| Language | Mandarin |
| Box office | US$49.7 million (international) |
Coming Home (Chinese:归来;pinyin:guīlái;lit. 'The Return') is a 2014 Chinesehistorical drama film directed byZhang Yimou and starringChen Daoming,Gong Li, andZhang Huiwen.[1][2] It was released in the US on September 11, 2015, and first shown to the public on the May 20, 2014, at theCannes Film Festival.[3] The story is adapted from the novelThe Criminal Lu Yanshi written by novelistGeling Yan.
Lu Yanshi was a professor before being sent to thelabor camp during theCultural Revolution. He escapes from the labor camp inXining 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 inRed 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.[4]
The film was shot inTianjin andBeijing.[5]
Coming Home had its international premiere at the2014 Cannes Film Festival in the out of competition section.[6] It was scheduled to be screened in the Special Presentations section of the2014 Toronto International Film Festival.[7]
OnRotten Tomatoes, 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."[8] According toMetacritic, which sampled 21 critics and calculated aweighted average score of 81 out of 100, the film received "universal acclaim".[9]
The film grossed¥23.7 million (US$3.80 million) on the first day in China[10] and reached US$46,000,000.[11] It earned a total ofUS$49.7 million internationally.[12]
