| Gong Li received the Taiwan Golden Horse Award for Best Actress via her performance in Sun Zhou's touching drama. She plays divorcee Sun Liying, a poor mother struggling financially and more importantly, to get her deaf son Zheng Da (Gao Xin, who actually is hearing impaired) into school. When he does not clear his admittance test, Liying has to quit her factory job to find one where she can be beside Zhang Da all the time in order to further his hearing and speech. Determined like few are, with the father mostly out of the way, help may lurk on the horizon in the form of kind teacher Fang (Shi Jing-Ming)...
Anchored beautifully by Gong Li's pitch perfect performance that no doubt is helped along by the innocence of Gao Xin's Zhang Da, director Sun Zhou (Zhou Yu's Train) knows that by mostly sitting back, you can translate real concerns into real cinema. Then again that's one of the hardest directing choices to pull off but he clinches subtlety (Shi Jing-Ming's performance as Mr. Fang representing this notion superbly), emotional beats and deservedly pushes with a melodramatic score by Zhao Jiping. It's an often tough watch to see Liying's devotion frequently not bearing fruit but she's a character that's convinced her son IS normal and her determination sometimes equals forceful too. Director Sun Zhou therefore have us slightly on the edge of our seats concerning the fates of the characters, not giving us final answers by the end but needed answers for Liying to move on. It's a beautiful solution. |
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