Perspective - Chinese Cinema Today and Tomorrow
The Red Awn
(Hong Se Kang Bai Yin) by CAI Shangjun
China / Comedy / 2007 / 101'
Starring: YAO Anlian (the father), LU Yulai (the son), HUANG Lu (the young lady)
The Film
CAI Shangjun is a recognized Screenwriter. He wrote the scripts of many Zhang Yang successes such as Spicy Love Soup (1997), Shower (1999), Sunflower (2005). The Red Awn is his first film. GU Xiaobai, film critic, wrote also his first screenplay with him. The Father, played by YAO Anlian, a famous actor in China, is also well known in France for his performance in Shanghai Dreams, directed by Wang Xiaoshai (Jury Prize in Cannes Film Festival 2005). LU Yulai, who plays the Son, is one of the new figures of the Chinese Cinema. He plays the leading man in Knitting presented at the Directors' Fortnight (Cannes 2008). He also played in The Last trip of the Judge Feng (2006), which won the Orizzonti Award in Venice (2006). The title of the movie "Kang Bai Yin" is a transliteration of the English word "Combine", which means harvesting machine. The red Combine was a symbol of socialist agriculture in the fifties and sixties. Cai Shangjun uses this word, now forgotten, as a strong image of recent changes.
Synopsis
A long time ago, the father went to look for work in the city, leaving his wife and son at home. The mother dies, the father doesn't come back, so the son grows up, alone. One day, the father reappears suddenly at the front door. He comes back to marry a woman. From there will begin a tragic conflict between the father and the son. The son wants to make it worse, the father tries to resolve it, confined between the guilt of not having been there when he was needed and the necessity of being respected as a father. They leave together on the roads to work on the fields on a red Combine...