Steal Happiness

Zhang Damin is the eldest son of a large family. The weight of the household is on him. He deals with everybody’s troubles. The house they live in is down a back alley. It is small and cramped. The brothers and sisters grow up. Some marry, some move out. Some of them come back again. Each time the house has to be rearranged. Damin finds a way each time, and he does it without complaining. The film tells everyday difficulties as comedy, with a mild irony in the way it looks at them. What it is about is holding a family together, from a novel by Liu Heng, with Feng Gong as Damin. The hundred and five minute film was the first Yang Yazhou directed on his own, a Chinese production finished in 1999.