A realistic family film directed by Li-Na Yang, starring Wu Yanshu and Xi Meijuan, especially starring Chen Xiaoxuan and starring Zhu Shimao in Friendship, was released in Chinese mainland on September 10, 2022.

The film tells the story of an 85-year-old mother and a 65-year-old daughter living together. My daughter is burdened with her father's guilt and leads a puritan life. Azhamo's illness has changed her, and her elderly mother needs to pay tenacious vitality to take care of her daughter. Two lives complement each other in this process.

Film appreciation

From the film, we can see a responsibility of the creator. This is the first time that China's films have confronted Alzheimer's disease, which is an unprecedented female story.

My daughter had a very happy family when she was young. Her parents are both senior intellectuals, one studying archaeology and the other studying literature. This kind of happiness came to an abrupt end one day in the 1960s.

The father became the target of the attack and finally committed suicide, while the daughter and mother probably played the role of accomplices in this process for some reason. This incident has also become a nightmare that plagues the mother and daughter, especially the daughter. My daughter is unmarried and childless for life, and her reticence before her illness and her insistence on publishing her father's archaeological diary are probably related to this.

Those seemingly meaningless words after the daughter's illness, including the contradiction with her mother, are just symptoms of simple illness, or the germination and awakening of some hidden consciousness in her heart.

My daughter said the word "shotgun" under the bed after her illness, was afraid to visit her students, was extremely introverted and silent before her illness, and complained and accused her mother after her illness, all of which exposed some long-hidden secrets in her heart.

In addition, a metaphor in the film is very interesting. Father is a whale that can't swim, daughter is water and mother is the sea. Water drops will eventually flow into the sea, and the daughter will eventually become a mother. Whales that can't swim will run aground on the beach and die, becoming innocent victims.