Shower / Xizhao
Directed by Zhang Yang
With Zhu Xu, Pu Cun Xin, Jiang Wu
China, 1999, 92 minutes
In Mandarin; English subtitles
Shower will be the next film showing in the series In Focus: Fortissimo Films at MoMA, in midtown Manhattan at 11 West Fifty-third Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues. It will also screen on Friday, November 18, 2011, 7:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2.
Synopsis: Evoking the sharp contrasts of China’s rapid transition from traditional living to ultra-modernization, Shower opens with a wondrous fantasy of a high-tech automated shower, which then slams into a vision of a traditional bathhouse—a couple thousand years old and a culture unto itself. Mistakenly believing that his father has passed away, a man returns to Beijing from the Shenzhen region, where he had been looking to be part of China’s economic boom. His father, meanwhile, has remained behind to raise a develop-mentally challenged son and manage a run-down bathhouse in dire need of upkeep. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics.
