Set in his hometown of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, writer-director Zhou Ziyang’s debut is a tough-minded tale of a family warring against a patriarch whose corruption is symptomatic of larger societal ailments.
Eager to feed his gambling addiction, spoil his mistress and play the poo-bah, Lao Yang steals the funds his children raised for his wife’s surgery. Everyone has been struggling in the years since Ordos invested in an ostensibly prosperous modernization project, and Lao’s ruthless transgression sets off a dispute that threatens to tear the already stressed-out family apart.
Drawing upon compellingly complex performances and strikingly emblematic images, Zhou is so good at balancing the intimate with the social in this story that feels as akin to great midcentury American drama as to the mounting troubles of modern China.
