The Road Home
1999
Director: Zhang Yimou
Stars: Zhang Ziyi, Zheng Hao, Sun Honglei
As you might guess, romances aren't normally my cup of tea. Usually I find their unrealistic melodrama and cornball scripts too much to handle. But The Road Home takes a simpler approach than most of the other overblown lovey-dovey crap out there, and the movie works much better as a result.
The story is told mostly in flashback, as a man (Sun Honglei) returns to his boyhood home in a small village after his father's death. His mother's grief and request that the body be carried to the gravesite in another village by hand prompts the man to recall the story about how his father and mother got together (played by Zheng Hao and Zhang Ziyi in her debut role).
As I said before, the story is pretty simple. Ther's no big war or racist father or different classes or fatal diseases keeping the two lovers apart -- they simply could not get together right away, and the film focuses on that (along with the feeling of loss and heartbreak) rather than showing a lot of slow-motion shots with cheesy power ballads like most other films in the genre do. This approach helps elevate it out of the "chick flick" realm, and makes The Road Home something most anyone can enjoy.
RATING: 7