Screener provided as part of MIFF 2024
The one-child policy of China casts a long shadow across Brief History of a Family (2024), a taut and beguiling debut feature from Jianjie Lin. After an incident at school sparks an unlikely connection, the shy and reserved teen Shuo (Sun Xilun) begins to spend more and more time at his more confident classmate Wei’s (Lin Muran) upper-middle-class house.
The first time Shuo enters Wei’s family home, he is immediately drawn to the large tree garden blooming out of the back window, his envy and wonder emanating off the well contained screen. In a mannered film like Brief History of a Family, where emotions and intentions are tightly contained, this moment shines brightly, working as a core grounding point the rest of the film is built upon.
As Shuo encroaches further and further into Wei’s family, the suspense and sinister undertones simmer at a low frequency, creating a palpable atmosphere that propels the story. The young boy quickly becomes the flower of affection for both of Wei’s parents, who are not given names in the film but are played wonderfully by Guo Keyu and Zu Feng. Their care and desire to help this teenager plays against the thriller style that Lin is seeping into every moment of the story, creating a wonderful contrast that makes for great tension.
Lin’s camera and blocking choices are meticulously observed, wielded with a stern combination of remove and suspense that all the best modern thrillers embrace. However, when a filmmaker decides to withhold so much, an audience will begin to intensely scrutinise every morsel of information within a frame. The best thrillers can withstand this level of keen audience awareness, but most often the absence is felt.
With Shuo as the black hole at the centre of the frame, the film is barely able to support its own weight. The cinematography by Jiahao Zhang is deliberate and tense, accompanied appropriately by an abstract score by Toke Brorson Odin, which heightens the strong opening half of the film. However, all too often with indie thrillers that operate mostly on mood, style, and oppressive visual metaphors, the climax and resolution rarely reward the experience. The emotionality that Lin plays towards the conclusion of the film feels tepid and unrewarding, given the propulsive momentum and eerie suspense that takes up the majority of screen time. This is a delicate tightrope Lin is trying to execute in a debut feature, one that I’m sure will be more artfully handled in future projects.
That being said, Brief History of a Family’s conclusion does savvily leave you with more compelling ideas about the cost of oppressive government mandates like the one-child policy, and the impact it has on a family, from both the parents and the child. With a combination of strong performances and meticulous attention to suspenseful detail, Jianjie Lin’s debut feature will have you on the edge of your seat and questioning the next friend your kid brings home.
Brief History of a Family is playing at MIFF now.
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