Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains

In the town of Fuyang the grandmother falls ill and her four sons have to discuss who will care for her. Each has his own trouble: one runs a restaurant and is in debt, one is a fisherman, one gambles, one has a son about to marry. Over a year, life along the river goes on: moves, weddings, hospital rooms, and old neighbourhoods being torn down. Gu Xiaogang's first film takes its name from the handscroll Huang Gongwang painted six hundred years ago. The camera imitates that scroll: the riverbank flows past in long horizontal tracking shots while the characters enter and leave the frame. The long take that follows a couple swimming is its best-known sequence. The film was shot in Fuyang over two years and is the first part of a trilogy the director has planned. It was the closing film of Critics' Week at Cannes in 2019. Who it's for: Viewers who like Chinese independent cinema, long takes, and family epics. Who it's not for: It runs two and a half hours and the plot is deliberately loose. There are also many characters and it takes time to tell them apart.