Return (2014)

Coming Home is a nuanced tale of love, forgiveness, guilt, and devotion. Gong Li and Chen Dao Ming give subtly emotional performances as the husband who returns home after being "re-educated" in a camp during the Cultural Revolution and the wife so traumatized by events that she no longer recognizes the man she has been waiting on for years.

The film focuses on the three characters of this tragic family. Gong Li gives a heartbreaking portrayal of a woman with uneven mental and emotional capabilities, trapped in the past, and hiding a jarring sacrifice. Once, a school teacher, Yu now can barely function in her small gray world. Zhang Hui Wen takes daughter Dan Dan's emotional journey from self-centered teenager with no memory of her father to a mature young woman in a believable manner. Anchoring the acting and this family, is Chen Dao Ming's father Lu. Burdened with the guilt of having been torn from his family and seeing the wreckage upon his return, he resolutely and gently works to reunite the fragile relationships. Dao Ming's performance is free from over-sentimentality slowly drawing us in with the strength of his craft.

The settings are bleak and gray, focusing all the energy and attention on the actors. The music while adequate, once again, does nothing to distract from the performances and the telling of this sad story.

There are no easy answers for the problems the characters face. Often the best they can hope for is bittersweet acceptance in their resounding displays of love and loyalty.

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