Ray Pride

Critics, unlike audiences, are prone to fearing the line between sentiment and sentimentality, tending to dwell on the question, when does a film have heart and when it is shamelessly plucking the heartstrings? Chen Kaige's Beijing-set modern-day telling of the tensions between a father and his shy son, a 13-year-old violin prodigy, is a lovingly orchestrated portrait of family life. It's scored to a wealth of classical music, and subtly, a critique of contemporary Chinese society and its faith in the necessity of accommodating the fast-paced modern world. Is it a conservative movie? An apolitical movie? A film content to be touching and true? Hardly. Chen has quoted a journalist as telling him that everyone in China lives in economic fear. "Everyone believes there's the potential to become a millionaire, or even a billionaire. That's the major concern in Chinese culture now." Chen's ninth feature, after the straight-to-video English-language erotic conflagration "Killing Me Softly," is tender, if minor-key work from a major figure in contemporary film. 117m.

"Together" opens Friday.

(2003-06-04)

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