A Family Tour (Ying Liang, 2018) (Patreon)

In the midst of its scathing critique of the repressive government of the People's Republic of China, a totalitarian state that "disappears" its critics and rips families apart, A Family Tour does something of which, ironically, the old Maoist regime would probably approve. This film is a rigorous act of self-criticism on the part of director Ying Liang, a melancholy look at the life of a dissident artist and the impact their political decisions have on those in their personal orbit. There's a very real sense in which this film asks whether it is worth it.

Essentially a true story, A Family Tour does find Ying taking some liberties, the most obvious one being the casting of his onscreen avatar as a woman. Yang Shu (Gong Zhe) is a filmmaker living in exile, largely owing to a film she made five years ago that ran directly afoul of the Chinese censors. That film, within the world described by A Family Tour, is the very same film that Ying made in 2012, When Night Falls, which dramatized the story of Yang Jia, a young man who received the death sentence after murdering six policemen. Because Ying's film expressed sympathy for Yang, and the criminal's mother who was crusading to get the capital sentence overturned, the director (like Yang Shu in A Family Tour) had to flee the country permanently. 

The plot of A Family Tour is relatively simple, despite its geopolitical chicanery. Yang Shu cannot return home to Sichuan, and lives with her husband Kaming (Pete Teo) and son Yue-Yue (Tham Xin Yue) in Hong Kong. Kaming, a Hong Konger, arranges for Yang Shu's mother, Mrs. Chen (Nai An) to receive a visitor's passport to take a tour of Taiwan, which will coincide with Yang Shu's appearance at a Tainwanese film festival. Because of Yang Shu's high-profile dissident status, her mother has had to agree not to meet with her daughter. So the family shadows Mrs. Chen on her arranged bus tour, spending time with her and telling strangers that she is a family friend.

What is particularly notable about A Family Tour, however, is not this awkward ruse. It is the distance and resentment that simmers between mother and daughter. Mrs. Chen all but comes out and tells Yang Shu that she blames the director for her father's incarceration and eventual death. When Mrs. Chen, who needs and operation, falls ill and Kaming tries to finagle some sort of hardship passport to keep his mother-in-law in Taiwan, or bring her to Hong Kong, the woman repeatedly announces, "Or I could just sever all ties with Yang Shu," as easily as if she were suggesting taking a cab instead of the bus. The subtext is practically blaring: Yang Shu's dissident actions were selfish, and while Mrs. Chen still loves her daughter, she will never forgive her.

If anything, Ying falters by making his confession too direct. Toward the end of A Family Tour, when we see Yang Shu presenting her banned film at the festival in Taiwan, it is actually just Ying showing an extended clip from When Night Falls. If the director is going to make so little distinction between fiction and reality, why did he make Yang Shu a female director? A Family Tour could have used more distance, more abstraction. But there is no mistaking Ying's sense of sorrow and regret when Yang Shu asks her mother whether she has ever watched her debut film, which is clearly about her. "No," she replies, "I've never much liked movies." Later, on the plane back to Sichuan, we see Mrs. Chen trying to watch When Night Falls on an iPad, and falling asleep.

So yes, Ying has risked life and limb to make radical art that has highlighted the abuses of the Chinese regime. But if we can judge from A Family Tour, he has, like so many intellectuals, alienated himself from his family in the process. Only in his case, he betrayed their Communist ideals and jeopardized their very lives in the process. And so in the end, A Family Tour seems to ask, if we must break with everything we have known in order to fight for justice, who is it that we become?