There is a secret communication code shared silently between the people who suffered opression and whose freedom is threatened. Yes, they will say ´good bye´, like everyone does, but followed or preceded by short instructions about what to do in case ´it happens´, repeating short direction about how to escape, just in case...Individuals who escaped opression and prison and dead, they know it, and their life and the lives of those around them will always be cursed with the curse of the ´life after´.
I´ve spent my early childhood surrounded by people who wanted to live a prison of a country and were not allowed, or who were allowed but had to leave everything behind, or who did their best to escape illegaly from the prison of the country, with the price of their freedom or the freedom of their relatives, or both. What fascinated me always was the exchange between the people talking. Sometimes there were no words at all, just hands raised in vain or long silences.
A Family Tour by Ying Liang is the story of a young film director forced to leave mainland China for Hong Kong after producing a film with a subversive message against the authorities. For five years, she haven´t seen her ailing mother, who is about to make an important surgery. Before that happens, she plans to meet her in Taiwan, together with her husband and son. The mother is taking a tour and a couple of small presents later, they are allowed to follow the bus discretely and spend some little time together.
The film director himself is refugiated to Hong Kong after a similar encounter with the censors of the Popular Republic of China. However, the story can be replicated from all over the world. All those having to do at least once with an oppressive regime will instantly recognize the secret exchange between people on the run. People whispering for avoiding their words being fully understood or not sharing their escape plane with everyone for fear of being caught.
A Family Tour succeeds to speak that language of the nostalgy for home of the displaced. The young film director is asked during a short encounter with media during a film festival in Taiwan she participates where is home for her: China or Hong Kong? None of it, she answers in a whim.
The mother-daughter encounter is such an emotionally-filled process. There are many words that fail to be told and empathy gestures stopped. The memories are revisited and rebuilt and confirmed every single time. And there is, as usual, in such cases, betrayal, lot of it. The betrayal of the mother who for the price of not losing her country is keen to cut contact with her daughter, to officially accept the fact of it.
I love very much the daughter´s genuine refusal to accept the double standards and her revolt and the passion for the mission of her work. If I would have continued to live in a prison-country, I would have for sure end up in one of their many prisons. But in a way, I can understand, without empathize, with the steadiness of the mother in cuting the contact in other to protect everyone. Her sickness and refusal to stay with her daughter´s family in Hong Kong, because she longs to go back to her native Sichuan, put things in a deeper human perspective. This is why the daughter is so alone, no matter what. People fighting for freedom with no compromise are usually very alone.
I appreciated how poetically the story is told through the images: long slowly movement of the camera, the focus on the faces of the actors and the integration of the poetic innuendos.
As for now, the movie is available to watch on Mubi.
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