Coming Home 归来 [C-Movie] (2014)

The story is adapted from the novel, The Criminal Lu Yanshi (simplified Chinese: 陆犯焉识; traditional Chinese: 陸犯焉識) written by novelist Geling Yan. Lu Yanshi (simplified Chinese: 陆焉识; traditional Chinese: 陸焉識, “Yanshi” literally means “how to recognize”) was a professor before being sent to the labor camp (laogai, literally “reform through labor”) during the Cultural Revolution. He escaped from the labor camp in Xining to meet his long-missed wife Feng Wanyu (simplified Chinese: 冯婉瑜; traditional Chinese: 馮婉瑜) and daughter Dandan (Chinese: 丹丹). However, the police were already waiting outside the house to arrest him. Dandan, who was then a teenage ballerina, could not play the leading role due to her father’s outlaw status. Under the temptation of regaining the leading role, Dandan revealed her parents’ secret meeting plan to the police. The meeting ended with the capture of Lu and Dandan getting the supporting role. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Lu came home only to find his broken family, his wife suffering from amnesia and his daughter working as textile worker. Under the shock of former official’s sexual harassment, his wife sometimes recognized him as Officer “Fang” instead of being her husband. To reawaken his wife’s memory, Lu played out as a total stranger just to be near with his wife. Although she recognized him as a letter reader or a piano tuner, he never could be able to be close enough to live with his chaste wife. During these years, Lu continued to write to his wife as a way of communicating with his wife and to convince his wife to forgive their daughter. The movie ended with Lu’s wife waiting to receive her husband outside the railway station and Lu standing with her on a snowy day, pretending to be pedicab driver.