At this point, a parent really ought to be
able to deal with a son or daughter coming out of the closet, but things are
still very different in China. However, Guan Zhiguo manages to take it in
stride. That doesn’t mean he’s progressive, he is just used to his grown
children’s disappointments. A series of unannounced visits will yield
bittersweet fruit in Zhang Meng’s Mandarin remake of the Giuseppe Tornatore’s Italian
film, Everybody’s Fine (trailer here), which
is now playing in New York.
As you might remember from Tornatore’s
film (but hopefully not the 2009 American remake starring Robert “Keep Meeting
the Parents” De Niro), when all his offspring bail on Guan’s attempted family
gathering, the widower hits the road to pay surprise pop-in visits to his two
sons and two daughters. He starts with his youngest son Guan Hao, but the
photographer never appears at his studio-flat. Eventually, he moves on to his
eldest daughter Guan Qing, who is in the midst of a messy divorce she has kept
from him. Viewers also learn from sotto voce conversations, her brother Hao was
visiting Tibet, but his whereabouts are currently unknown following a
disastrous avalanche.
The Guan siblings duly work the phones,
warning each other of their father’s anticipated visits and conspiring to keep
their brother’s uncertain fate from him. Unfortunately, the shortfall between
the lives Guan Zhiguo expected to find and the messy realities offer plenty of
grist for arguments. This is particularly true of Guan Quan, who sold the
Shanghai flat his parents bought for him to help fund a dubious start-up. At
least, Guan Chu really seems to be working as a ballerina in Macao, but that
gig turns out to be less impressive than her father had been led to believe.
Even he can tell there is more to Chu’s relationship with her roommate than she
lets on, further upending his perception of his daughter.
In recent years, the Chinese government
has tried to coopt the concept of the “American Dream” with their “Chinese
Dream” propaganda campaign. While intended as a pseudo-nationalistic slogan,
many have chosen to interpret it in economic terms not so very different from
its American analog. In several ways, screenwriter Xiao Song’s adaptation
critiques both competing conceptions of the Chinese Dream, lamenting the damage
done to familial bonds and cultural traditions by go-go consumerism and runaway
urbanization.
If Zhang was still smarting from the
shelving of his 2014 film Uncle Victory because
of its star’s drug arrest, he sure plays it safe with Zhang Guoli, who has
appeared in overtly propagandistic films such as The Founding of a Republic and Back to 1942. Unfortunately, actor Zhang also plays it safe with his
performance. He hunches up his shoulders colorfully enough and putters about
with a dignified air, but he never takes us anywhere surprising. However, Yao
Chen, Ye Yiyun, and Shawn Dou quite distinctively render the angsts and
resentments of Qing, Chu, and Quan, respectively.
Despite the memory-play nature of Guan
Zhiguo’s journey, Zhang Meng maintains a surprisingly up-tempo pace. He also
recruits a number of big name cameos, including auteur Jia Zhangke, appearing
as a Macanese gangster, and Vivian Wu (The
Last Emperor, The Pillow Book) flashing some earthy charm as the Sichuan mahjong
player with whom Papa Guan strikes up a flirty friendship.