The A24ification of world cinema continues apace with Brief History of a Family, a dreary Chinese genre exercise that premiered earlier this year at Sundance. Essentially an umpteenth riff on Pasolini’s Teorema but filtered through the antiseptic upper-middle-class environments of Parasite, Brief History distinguishes itself only by virtue of its implicit connection to 20th-century Chinese history. In the aftermath of Mao’s disastrous one-child policy, the otherwise normal relations between would-be siblings take on an air of perversion and menace.
This is the story of Yan Shuo (Sun Xilun), a sullen underclass loner who becomes friends with a somewhat well-to-do classmate, Tu Wei (Lin Muran). Wei is a bit of a failson, drifting without purpose and interested in little else beyond video games. After Shuo and Wei meet at school following an accident during gym class, the quiet, awkward Shuo begins insinuating himself into Wei’s family. According to Shuo, he lives alone with his abusive alcoholic father, and Wei’s parents gradually begin to feel protective toward him. As a kind of blank slate, Shuo is the perfect screen onto which the couple can project their desires. Mrs. Tu (Guo Keyu), a former flight attendant, feels that her youth and beauty have slipped away from her, while Mr. Tu (Zu Feng) is a microbiologist who cannot inspire any sort of work ethic in his own son.
Given the recent release of Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, another Teorema manqué, to be sure, it’s tough not to implicitly compare Brief History with that cum-stuck portrait of a sociopath. The plots of both films are almost exactly the same. Poor kids are dangerous because they lack the refinement that privilege inculcates. Director Lin Jianjie, making his feature debut, doesn’t have all that much to contribute to this wan moral, aside from slow zooms and underlit interiors. The film offers chilliness but little else, suggesting a studiously empty Kiyoshi Kurosawa impression. By the time Brief History drifts toward its strangely inconclusive finale, you might find yourself wishing that this particular history had been even briefer.
Published as part of NYAFF 2024.
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