Movies in Brief

SUNFLOWER
Unrated, 132 minutes

Every director has the right to make a nostalgic movie about his childhood. From Ingmar Bergman to Steven Spielberg, most love to eulogize those bittersweet summers when they were crazy kids free of adult responsibilities. Now, a new generation of Chinese directors is putting its childhood on film, which is complicated since most of the filmmakers came of age in the 1970s, and the childhoods they remember are rooted in the harrowing violence of the Cultural Revolution. Zhang Yang's "Sunflower" is the latest installment in this genre, and while it's a near-perfect male weepie, it also feels a bit like reheated leftovers.

The film kicks off with the birth of the main character, Zhang Xiangyang (Zhang Fan) in 1967, then jumps forward to 1976, when he's 9-years-old and meeting his father for the first time. Solid, stolid dad (Sun Hai-ying) has just returned from a six-year stint in a labor camp, where his hands were smashed, leaving him unable to continue his career as a painter. Instead, he focuses all his energies on teaching his son to become the great painter he never was. This father-son battle of wills continues for years; we check in on its progress in 1987 and 1999. All clichés are present and accounted for in what feels like an art-house Frankenstein, stitched together from pieces of other movies.

That said, Mr. Zhang is one of China's most gifted directors, and he gets some truly memorable performances out of his actors, in particular Joan Chen playing the family's long-suffering mother. The early scenes in the communal courtyards of their neighborhood are so sharply observed that you find yourself getting nostalgic for a lifestyle you never experienced. Mr. Zhang is capable of more, but if you want to see what he has to say about his childhood, or if you want to have a good cry, this one's for you.