Review

Zhang Yang's second film, Shower, has already been highly rated on the festival circuit - a prize-winner at Rotterdam, Toronto, San Sebastian, and Thessaloniki.

The film sets old traditions against post-communist Chinese society, revolving around Master Liu, the aging father who runs a traditional bathhouse, and his two sons, the simpleton Erming cared for affectionately by his father and the older brother Daming who left the home nest to become a business man elsewhere.

Daming arrives at his father's bathhouse, beckoned by a postcard from his brother that falsely led him to believe that his father was dying. Discovering the opposite, he is annoyed to have made the trip for nothing, but takes advantage of the occasion to touch base with his family and his cultural roots.

Zhang Yang shows the importance of water in the Chinese culture through the social dimensions of the bathhouse as a meeting place where the regulars play cards, hold cricket fights, get massages and shaves, drink tea on floating trays, gossip and argue and take great pleasure submerged in steaming water. The bathhouse even serves as an after-hours place for a disputing couple to patch up their differences, in the mystical waters. This cultural color is doubled with the excellent performances by the three central characters - all stage actors. In its simplicty and caricatures, Zhang Yang presents a heart-warming slice of life.