Pushing Hands

Ang Lee was unemployed for six years before making this. After graduating from New York University he ran the household while his wife supported a family of four. The way out came from a screenplay competition the Taiwanese government ran to revive its film industry: Lee submitted two scripts, which placed first and second. The winning one took the 1990 Excellent Screenplay Award and NT$400,000, and Lee was hired to direct his own text. This is his first feature. An elderly tai chi master moves from Beijing to New York to live with his son. The son is married to an American writer, and two people with no shared language now face each other all day in the same apartment. The title comes from the tai chi exercise of redirecting an opposing force rather than meeting it. The second script became The Wedding Banquet; together with Eat Drink Man Woman, the three are usually treated as a trilogy about fathers. Who it is for: viewers who like immigration and generational distance told at a kitchen table rather than at volume. Who it is not for: anyone expecting technical polish. This is a first film: low budget, flat in rhythm, and some scenes sit close to television drama.