Łaźnia

Like a spa, this film also helped me a lot with regular evening spiritual hygiene. It is not exotic in form; on the contrary, it clearly refers to the traditions of European narrative film. Zhang depicts the picturesque environment of a Chinese spas with all the remarkable characters and their stories and small (but actually big) dramas. The central motif is the clash of two worlds – the new world and the world of old traditions, which is embodied by the spa and its owner, Master Liu. Da Ming's "lost" son returns from the new world and slowly but surely succumbs to the spell of the slow but wise space of the traditions of purification and human closeness. He also finds his way to mentally handicapped brother Er Ming, and despite the fact that the end of the old world is inevitable, catharsis will persevere the end of the spas (and the breakup of their staff). Zhang chooses a rather slow, yet charming and gracefully comic narrative approach, which lightens the tragic and melancholic undertone of the Chinese spa and adds a wisely humorous touch to everything. It's too bad that the film has a few dead spots, which are caused by the somewhat sharp cut to another space-time... (31.08.2004)

A son who lives a western-style, hurried life, earning lots of money returns to the family hearth where life goes on in the old fashioned way, in the spirit of tradition. His father runs a bath house where traditions are upheld, the atmosphere is unhurried and a certain group of “regulars" go there every day to relax. First the son is disgusted by everything that he had run away from, but slowly he begins to discover the magic of tradition. He finds a path back to his “simple" brother and father, who have a lovely relationship together. Perhaps this sounds a little “cheap" and it’s made in a way that it gets under your skin and the acting is impressive. Everything is kind of cute and unhurried, even when negative topics are addressed (demolition to make way for a supermarket, death, dejection, what to do with an unwanted brother, etc.). (28.01.2005)