Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (Xiaogang Gu, 2019)

[TajSamKojiJesam]

At her 70th birthday celebration, the aged mother of the Gu family suffers from a stroke, which precipitates her decline into dementia. Who will take care of her? The four brothers face crucial changes in their relationships to one another, as they deal with their own family problems. Their destinies, linked by love and challenged by questions and dilemmas, unfold over the course of the four seasons, as it would in an ancient Chinese scroll painting.

It’s an ambitious undertaking for a first feature. Not only was the film shot over two years, in order to reflect the town in all four seasons, Dwelling In The Fuchun Mountains is conceived as the first part of a trilogy titled ’A Thousand Miles Along the Eastern Yangtze’. It’s a strikingly beautiful work; there’s a visual drama here which is frequently more emphatic than anything which unfolds in the story. As such, it should attract further attention on the festival circuit, following on from its slot as the closing film of Critics’ Week. Comparisons with the work of Taiwan’s Edward Yang will position Gu as a talent to watch in new Chinese cinema.
(...)
The title is not the only element that the film borrows from the scroll painting. There is something of the classical Chinese painting tradition in the way the the picture depicts seemingly mundane vignettes with such meticulous, painstaking detail that they are elevated into moments of real significance. The score also blends past and present, with a Chinese flute motif which sounds as though it has been piped in from centuries before alongside a slicker, more modern approach later on.
https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/...139844.article

Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains《春江水暖》- Extract 2 片段2 - YouTube