Screened as part of NZIFF 2003

Together 2002

He Ni Zaiyiqi

Directed by Chen Kaige

China / Korea In Mandarin with English subtitles
116 minutes 35mm

Director

Screenplay

Chen Kaige, Xue Xiau Lu

Photography

Kim Hyung-koo

Music

Zhao Lin

With

Tang Yun, Liu Peiqi, Chen Hong, Wang Zhiwen, Chan Kaige

Festivals

Toronto, London 2002; Rotterdam, Sydney 2003

Awards

Audience Award, Tribeca 2003

Elsewhere

Xiochun, a 13-year-old boy with a gift for the violin, moves to Beijing from a small provincial town with his father in the hope of auditioning for a prestigious music academy. Refined by city life, and dazzled by the worldly young woman in the apartment upstairs, Xiaochun becomes increasingly embarrassed by his father's country ways. This estrangement is almost encouraged by his father who arranges for the boy to be tutored; first by a disillusioned musician more accustomed to teaching the talentless progeny of the pretentious; then by a manipulative star-maker, played by director Chen Kaige himself.

"Music, mostly of the Western classical variety and much of it floridly romantic, pours through Chen Kaige's film Together and helps infuse its story with a feverish emotionalism. The newest movie by the Chinese filmmaker best known for Farewell My Concubine is not afraid to push buttons with its heady potpourri of Bruch, Richard Strauss, Liszt and Massenet, all pointing toward a climactic performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D." — Stephen Holden, NY Times