Final Rating: 3/5
Brief History of a Family is a fascinating glimpse into a post one-child-policy China, and the potential trauma that can come from it. Yan Shuo (Sun Xilun) finds unexpected solace in his new friend Wei’s (Lin Muran) family after they form an unexpected friendship. As Yan Shuo’s love for Wei’s parents grows, tensions begin to arise in their friendship and the family as a whole.
This movie is directed brilliantly by Lin Jianjie, who gives us a great mix of dark comedy and tragedy over the movie’s runtime. The movie is amazingly done on the technical side too, but it does feel held back by its relatively lackluster plot. It’s tough, because the movie up until the end had set up some very interesting plot points and I was excited to start seeing the climax and resolution to what we had been fed.
However, the movie seems to give up in the final lap, and the last five minutes flounder. You could say this keeps the movie realistic, and leaves much up to interpretation. But it doesn’t feel that way, and if that was the case, there could have been more focus on character. Because despite spending all this time with the family, the audience doesn’t get much of a chance to bond with any of them.
I do appreciate how this movie presents the psychological effects the one child policy had on parents. The movie doesn’t work nearly as well in any other context, with the parents being so enamored by the idea of having a second son and I wish Lin Jianjie had decided to delve deeper into those emotions. Or at least committed to any emotion. There’s so many ways it could have gone, but in the end the decision is nowhere. Because what this movie offers, while quite good, isn’t enough to make it special, which it was so close to being.
Brief History of a Family was seen during the 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival.
