By Cynthia W. Gentry, © 2000 by Cynthia W. Gentry, published on Dailygossip.com, August 2000.
As a diehard stress kitten, I’m tired of people telling me in times of overwork and/or emotional distress that I should just “relax and take a hot bubble bath.” Who has time to take a bath? I hardly have time to take a shower. Luckily, I work at home, so I can get away with hunching over my keyboard in an unwashed t-shirt and sweats until at least noon.
Chinese director Zhang Yang’s second film, “Shower,” pokes gentle fun at people like me. It opens with a young man entering what appears to be a high-tech car wash for humans. He’s in and out, cleaned from head to toe, within about five minutes. Dissolve to the same young man, explaining the virtues of this gizmo, to the bemused denizens of a public bathhouse in Northern China. The frequenters of this establishment, run by Master Liu (Zhu Xu), are mostly elderly men who spend leisurely days at the bathhouse soaking and chatting, just as they have for years.
Into this picture comes Da Ming (Pu Cun Xin), Master Liu’s estranged son. A young, wealthy businessman, Da Ming has returned to the bathhouse and his childhood home after receiving a postcard from his retarded brother Er Ming (Jiang Wu), which seemed to imply that his father has died. Da Ming arrives to find his father alive and well; nothing has changed except him. He avoids the relaxation and camaraderie of the baths for late-night showers, and makes plans to return to his fast-paced lifestyle as quickly as possible.
But fate has different plans. A series of crises force Da Ming to keep postponing his departure. And the longer he delays, the more he becomes drawn into the world of the bathhouse, his long-neglected relationships with his father and brother, and the lives of the bathhouse’s patrons, which the movie sketches with humor and affection. But this is world that is about to end. Because the bathhouse and its neighborhood are slated for demolition to make way for “modernization.” With them will go a way of life.
Apparently, the community isn’t as lucky as the one I visited in Beijing last year, called the “Hutong,” which had turned itself into a tourist attraction. (A pedicab company’s brochure trumpeted Bill Gates as a previous guest, and the irony of an icon of capitalism being a celebrity in communist China was not lost on this writer.) I saw the soulless high-rises that will replace the neighborhood portrayed in “Shower,” and it’s the last time I’ll complain about the size of my apartment. Yet I also had a glimpse of the sense of community the Chinese enjoy: wherever we went, our hosts offered us food, drink and kindness. Where I live now, I don’t even know my neighbors.
Like Da Ming, it’s a good bet that we’ll find the pacing of “Shower” as slow as life in Master Liu’s bathhouse. In fact, at the risk of overworking the water metaphor, I’d describe the pace of this movie as glacial, at least in the beginning. But like a nice warm bath, “Shower” begins to work on you. Sure, you could quibble with some clichés (the retarded, happy brother has been overworked in Western cinema), but by the time Da Ming realizes what he’s been missing in life, we’re totally hooked into these characters and this world. I’m a pretty hard cookie when it comes to film, but my eyes were leaking something fierce by the time the credits rolled.
“Shower” isn’t afraid to take its time, and we shouldn’t either. After coming home from this movie, I lit some candles and took a nice long bath. It was way overdue. “Shower” is a pleasure to be savored, and a pleasure that encourages more.