A Banished Life
It’s understandable why Ying Liang would cautiously describe his latest film, A Family Tour, as only “semi-autobiographical.” There are, indeed, marked differences between him and his protagonist, a dissident Chinese filmmaker called Yang Shu travelling to Taiwan to meet her mother for the first time in years. For starters, his onscreen protagonist is a woman; unlike her, Ying hasn’t met his parents in person since his forced relocation from China to Hong Kong in 2012, when the Chinese authorities declared him persona non grata for pointing out the corruption of the country’s legal system and public security apparatus in When Night Falls.
Most importantly, the fictional Yang is dour and depressed. Ying, however, seems to radiate positivity at every turn. Barely had we sat down for our conversation in a café in his suburban neighbourhood in Hong Kong before he began to show me the photographs taken by pensioners participating in a workshop he was conducting for a local community collective, and the handmade leather wallet they gave him as a present. He’s visibly happy as he talks about devoting a large chunk of his time to his five-year-old son and the crops he’s cultivating in his backyard garden.
Beyond these details, however, A Family Tour actually cuts to the bone of Ying’s personal trauma. Based on his family’s real-life trip to the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung a couple of years ago to meet his similarly banished Sichuanese wife’s parents, the film follows Yang (played by Chinese actor Gong Zhe), her husband Ka-ming (Frank Teo), and their son (Tham Xin Yue) as they embark on a tortuous reunion with Yang’s ailing, longsuffering mother (Nai An). The reunion is fraught with difficulties. Barred from joining Yang’s mother on her tour bus, they are forced to follow her in a taxi, meeting her whenever she stops for sightseeing or meals. Only during the night are they able they to meet her for longer conversations in her hotel room.
Ying describes the crosstown pursuit and clandestine meetings as “comically absurd.” But isn’t a satire, and Ying never plays up the potentially comedic set-up for laughs. While Ying is right to say the film is not entirely factual, his emotional investment in his onscreen proxy’s predicament is painfully obvious: like him, the character is an artist who can’t go home, and has found herself increasingly estranged from her roots. Throughout the film, Yang remains emotionally aloof, as she continues to immerse herself in her work; it’s perhaps one way of sealing herself, Ying made , a short film depicting officials interrogating Yang’s mother upon her return from Taiwan.)
