Review of The Road Home

Zhang Yimou is a great director; his `Jou Dou' and `Raise the Red Lantern' are masterpieces. For no other reason, ‘The Road Home', with its naive love story and use of easy cinematographic formulas, is a bit of a disappointment. No doubt some of Yimou's qualities are here, such as his capacity to give life to characters with admirable dignity and tenacity (as Zhao Di), and his acute eye for exquisite landscapes and for color. But `The Road Home' does not go beyond this combination of nice cinematography (of a hilly Chinese village during springtime and winter) and a simple romantic plot (the young woman who takes care of her blind mother falls in love with the village teacher). The clichés and predictable formulas are frequent: the grandiose and melodramatic musical score emphasizing emotion; the slow-motion camera for ecstatic moments; the repetitive close-up of Ziyi Zhang's beautiful and inebriated face; the artificial plot obstacles adjourning the promised love. Though beautiful in its images, `The Road Home' lacks vigor and originality: it is too much style for little content (6/10).