Brief History of a Family (2024)

The young loner “Yuan Sho” (Xilun Sun) has an incident at school that sees him helped by the “Wei” (Muran Lin) who takes him to the nurse. That’s the start of a friendship that sees the injured lad introduced to his friend’s kindly mum (Ke-Yu Guo) and rather aloof scientist dad (Feng Zu) who take a shine to him as his vulnerability awakens hitherto subdued feelings with the adults whom, it emerges, might have liked more than just the one son - but who had to adhere to the prevailing one-child policy of the time. “Yuan Sho” clearly has baggage of his own and as the story unfolds you might expect it to take a predictable route, but it doesn’t. Indeed, as the plot develops and we learn more about what makes these characters tick, it starts to become quite an enigmatic story where uncertainty creeps in and stirs up the mix nicely as we head to a conclusion that is, in itself, inconclusive. It’s the effort from Xilun Sun that delivers best here, and with plenty of Bach mixed into a story of parental ambition, teenage indifference and just an hint of what might or might not be manipulation, we are left with a psychologically layered story with a bit of a difference.