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SHOWER Send This Review to a Friend
In keeping with its presentation of films from throughout the world, the New Films/New Directors Series 2000 series (see Special Reports) included the Chinese "Shower," directed and co-written by Zhang Yang, who tells a story set primarily in the neighborhood bathhouse in Beijing. It is an occasion to observe a set of characters who include the father who runs the place, his retarded son who assists him, and another son who has returned to visit. There is also the entourage frequenting the bathhouse; one teenager longs to sing and belts out his favorite in his best Italian, but freezes with fright if he has to perform before an audience.
The film's focus is on sorting out life's priorities and lending a hand to one another despite the pressures that envelop the various individuals. There is a tender scene in which the father is brought closer to his wife, from whom he has been growing apart. The plot moves forward with the threat of the bathhouse being closed to make way for construction in the name of progress. What makes "Shower" involving is the attention to the various characters, their desires and needs, and the vivid portrait of the odd milieu in which they exist.
This is a tender, funny and sometimes exuberant entertainment that meticulously escorts us into a world worth knowing more about. There is a bit of melodrama, but beneath it all is the director's sensitivity toward the people portrayed and the sadness involved when so-called advances begin to displace those whose lives center around their familiar surroundings. Residents of neighborhoods the world over have experienced such dislocations, which provides "Shower" with another reason why it has a universal ring. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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