Zhang Yang’s bittersweet tragi-comic film Shower (1999) presents a vision of self-care and informal mutual aid among the mostly elderly male clients of a somewhat dilapidated, unpretentious bath-house in an old Beijing hutong neighbourhood which is in sharp contrast to the hurried, mechanical and totally impersonal forms of amenity and cleanliness offered by the fast-paced, money-and technology-dominated world of contemporary China.
Dr. Michael CLARK (King's College London)
Zhang Yang (b. 1967) is one of the best-known of the so-called 'Sixth' or 'Urban Generation' of Chinese film-makers. Ever since his directorial debut in the late 1990s, he has demonstrated a consistent talent for addressing sensitive themes of interest to the mainstream Chinese public in easily accessible, entertaining and politically acceptable ways, without falling foul of the censorship. Following his directorial debut with Spicy Love Soup 爱情麻辣烫 (Aìqíng Má Là Tāng) in 1997, Shower was Zhang Yang's second feature film, and from this point onwards, until recently, all his films have been variations on the classic Chinese 'family-separation' genre (lunli qingqing pian, or "ethical family-affection-language films"), which has been a recurring strand in Chinese-language theatre and cinema since the 1950s and even earlier. In this genre, just as in 'Shower', the family home - or, in this case, the family bath-house - frequently becomes the setting where conflicts between tradition and modernity are played out.
Although made on a very modest budget of US$350,000, with no very high expectation of domestic box-office success, Shower was favourably reviewed by many influential Western critics following its release at the Toronto International Film Festival in November 1999 and subsequently won a number of awards when screened in several Western film festivals in 1999-2001. For details of the production, cast, box office, awards, etc., see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shower_(film) and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215369/
Dr. Michael CLARK (King's College London)
In Old Liu’s bath-house, the regular customers enjoy the benefits of a person-centred culture of care based on the traditional creature comforts of the bath-house and the values of personal service, face-to-face contact, mutual aid and respect, and a broad measure of tolerance for the eccentricities, foibles and failings of others, mediated through the physical and spiritual healing powers of water and massage. The bath-house serves as a refuge from the modern world where the regular customers obtain relief from their aches and pains, gamble on fighting crickets, seek advice and guidance, or consolation, for their marital and domestic woes, imagine themselves as operatic tenors, exchange insults and pleasantries, and generally pass the time in relaxing and relatively healthful pursuits. In the process, they learn to understand and appreciate each others’ qualities and limitations and reaffirm and strengthen their common humanity. Both for the regular clientele and for Old Liu and his sons who minister to them, the bath-house is a kind of school in the art of living well which does as much to enhance their psychological and spiritual well-being as their bodily health. However, the therapeutic and life-nurturing culture of the bath-house, with its deep connection to nature and to the care and cure of the soul as well as the body, is also shown as fragile, vulnerable to the forces of social change and physical decay, limited by virtue of its exclusive homosociality, and doomed to extinction in face of the onslaughts of techno-modernity and wholesale urban redevelopment.
Dr. Michael CLARK (King's College London)
See 'Movie Context', above
Jani Proctor-Xu, ‘Sites of Transformation: The Body and Ruins in Zhang Yang’s Shower’, in Fran Martin & Ari Larissa Heinrich, eds., Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation and Chinese Cultures (Honolulu; University of Hawaii Press, 2006), Ch. 10, pp. 162-175
Hongwei Lu, ‘From Routes to Roots, or Vice Versa: Transformation of Urban Space in China’s “New Urban Films”, Asian Cinema 19, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2008), 102-134, especially pp. 115-123
For English-language reviews of Shower and interviews with the director, some of which provide important information about the ‘making of’ the film as well as its principal themes and performers, see especially Michael Wilmington, ‘At Home in the Beauties of Zhang Yang’s ‘Shower’, Chicago Tribune (July 28th. 2000), at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-07-28/entertainment/0007280444_1_bathhouse-master-liu-zhang-yang-s-shower
Augusta Palmer, ‘After “Spicy Love Soup”, Zhang takes “Shower”, IndieWire (7th. July 2000), at http://www.indiewire.com/2000/07/interview-after-spicy-love-soup-zhang-takes-shower-81545/
Natalie Porter, ‘Shower’ (1999)’, at http://www.popmatters.com/review/shower/
Derek Elley, ‘Review: ‘Shower’, Variety (Sept. 13th. 1999), at http://variety.com/1999/film/reviews/shower-1200459104/
‘China Through a Lens: Director Zhang Yang Prepares for his Latest flick’, at http://www.china.org.cn/english/NM-e/82263.htm
Tony Rayns, ‘Shower’ (Review), Sight and Sound Vol. 4, no. 58 (2001), 11-14.
For a more critical view, see Andrew Chan, ‘Getting Home and other films of Zhang Yang’, Slant (15th. January 2009), at https://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/getting-home-and-other-films-of-zhang-yang
