GETTING HOME (CHINA)

Director Zhang Yang's Shower (2000), about the owners and patrons of a traditional bathhouse set for demolition, became one of the most widely distributed Chinese films. His success continued with Quitting and the highly ambitious family saga Sunflower. Yang's central theme is the clash between rural and urban, tradition and modernity. That main concern remains evident in his latest, Getting Home, although Yang seems here to be more consciously aiming to please the general public, with mixed results.

Zhao and Liu have, like millions of rural Chinese, emigrated to the city in search of employment. They have worked together as construction workers for four years and become best friends. We meet them towards the end of a drinking binge, when the slight and short Liu seems to have passed out. The corpulent Zhao carries his buddy on his back and boards a bus. He has realized before we do that Liu is dead and that he must, as promised, take him to his faraway town to be properly buried. The trip will be rich in incident and adventure, comedy and tragedy, as Zhao is determined to fulfill his commitment to bring Liu's corpse to his relatives_the film's Chinese title is based on the proverb: "A fallen leaf returns to its roots". Along the way, Zhao will meet some who will ease his burden and help him get closer to his destination, and others who will do the opposite. What emerges is a reasonably varied portrait of contemporary China.

Almost by definition, road movies like Getting Home are episodic. It's a bit of a disappointment how some very effective sequences are surrounded by others that succumb to excess. A lot of genuinely funny bits are generated by the various ways Zhao attempts to transport the corpse, including placing it inside a huge tractor tire. Yang ridicuously elongates the scene as if wanting to exhaust the comic potential of a man rolling inside the tire. A chapter involving a rich but pathetically lonely man who hires mourners to stage his own funeral is both hilarious and moving. One featuring a hysterical, heartbroken truck driver verges into schmaltz. Zhao's encounters with a homeless woman who earns a living by selling her blood, and a family of urban exiles turned beekeepers are very successful. Another involving a gang of repentant thugs requires too much suspension of disbelief.

Getting Home is wildly inconsistent. What smooths the ride through the rough spots is the winning performance by the enormously sympathetic Zhao Bensham, a stage comedian seen previously in Zhang Yimou's Happy Times. May we see more from him soon.