Taking Father Home

Taking Father Home (Chinese: 背鸭子的男孩) is an independent Chinese film. It is the first feature from Chinese director Ying Liang. The entire movie was shot with a borrowed camera.[1] The Chinese title directly translates as "the duck-carrying boy," which is a motif recurring throughout the film.

Taking Father Home
Traditional背鴨子的男孩
Simplified背鸭子的男孩
Mandarinbēi yāzi de nánhái
Directed byYing Liang
Produced byPeng Shan
Written byYing Liang
Peng Shan
StarringXu Yun
Liu Xiaopei
Wang Jie
Song Cijun
Music byZhang Xiao
CinematographyLi Rongsheng
Ying Liang
Edited byYing Liang
Distributed byTidepoint Pictures
Release date
  • February 4, 2006 (2006-02-04) (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
Running time
100 minutes
CountryChina
LanguageMandarin

Plot

The film opens with a shot of Xu Yun, shirtless, speaking to his mother. Their village in Sichuan province is about to be relocated to make room for a government industrial zone, and Xu Yun declares that he will search for his father, who has been gone for six years, in the city of Zigong. As he has no money, he carries a basket with two ducks instead.

On the bus to Zigong, Xu Yun meets a scar-faced older man who catches a thief, shows him how to eat watermelon "like a man," and advises him not to let himself be bullied. The older man helps Xu Yun find a place to stay, but as soon as he leaves Xu Yun is kicked out and sent to the police station.

He is soon let go, but left homeless on the street. One of the police officers finds him and offers to let him stay for the night. The officer tries to get him to return to his village the next morning, but Xu Yun resists. On a radio broadcast, he hears that the scar-faced man from earlier was involved in a murder incident.

Xu Yun and the officer continue the search for Xu Yun's father, which turns out to be a wild goose chase. Later, while Xu Yun goes swimming, the officer is attacked by a gang. In the hospital, Xu Yun overhears a woman talking to his father on the phone. He follows her home as an flood warning rings across the city, instructing residents to evacuate. She tells him where to find his father. When Xu Yun gets there, his father is being attacked by creditors, and he rushes with a knife to fend them off. He then kills his father with the knife. On the bus back to the village, Xu Yun catches a thief, closely mirroring the earlier scene where the Scar-Faced man did the same.

Awards

References
  1. Catsoulis, Jeannette (2008-09-18). "A City in Flux". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-11-25.
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