Together, the new film from Chinese director Chen Kaige, is a flawed, yet thoughtful piece of filmmaking.
This sentimental drama tells the story of a father, Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi), and his 13-year-old son, Xiaochun (Tang Yun). They're peasants from the Chinese countryside, but Liu Cheng has great plans for his boy. The child is a prodigy on the violin, and his father wants to bring him to the bright lights of a newly Westernized Beijing, where he can hire a proper music teacher for the boy and thus get him a better life.
Along the way, Xiaochun enters the lives of Prof. Jiang (Wang Zhiwen), a slovenly, lonely violin instructor, and Lili (Chen Hong), a spoiled, young, single woman who has affairs with businessmen who buy her everything that the freer, more capitalistic Chinese society can offer.
In the end, though, Together comes down to a choice: Will Xiaochun pursue his training as a violinist with a new, elite teacher, Prof. Yu (director Chen in a fine turn), or will he throw that away to be with his father, who hides a secret that threatens to destroy their hopes?
Together is a pretty good film, but is a story you've seen a thousand times at the movies. One of its biggest problems is the casting of Tang Yun in the central role of the child prodigy. Tang simply isn't a professional actor -- Chen discovered him at a violin recital -- and throughout much of the film, he's stiff and unemotional, making it difficult to warm up to his character. But his performance gets better in the film's latter stages.
The same could be said of the other central figure, Xiaochun's father. Initially, Liu Peiqi plays his character a little too broadly -- his uneducated peasant seems to serve more as comic relief than anything. But when Liu Cheng realizes he may be losing his son to the strict Prof. Yu, who wants Xiaochun to live with him while he trains, Liu's performance transforms nicely from comic to pathos -- he knows that in order to give his son everything, he must let him go.
Together has a slightly warmed-over feel -- the story, the situations and the characters are a little too familiar. Still, despite various dramatic missteps and pacing probelms, it is redeemed by its final act. Like the actors, the film gets better the longer it goes, and it builds to a powerful conclusion, in which everything Chen teased us with in the first hour -- the damaged father-son relationship, the beauty of music, the redemptive power of friendship -- comes magnificently together in a virtuoso climax that may prompt the dabbing of eyes with hankies.
In Mandarin, with English subtitles.
(This film is rated G)
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