Un été chez grand-père

I'm not a fan of Hou's later work, which can be obscure, pretentious and painfully slow, but this early movie of him from 1984 is gripping in its simplicity. One summer in Taiwan, a young boy and his sister are sent to the country home of their grandparents, as their mother has been hospitalized. The movie is told from the children's point of view, and nothing terribly important happens in much of it, just life passing by during one summer in a rural village in Taiwan. The boy interact with the other children in the picturesque mountain village, while her younger sister, who is unable to understand what has happened to her mother, mostly stays at home of their grandparents. What is best about the movie is the warm portrayal of the characters, especially the grandfather, a stern doctor.

A boy and his little sister are taken by their young uncle to spend their summer holiday at the country house of their grandparents. They leave behind their father and a seriously ill mother who is hospitalised and awaiting an operation. This comparatively early work by the great Taiwanese director Hou Xiaoxian has an idyllic look that is utterly deceptive. Hou is too complex an artist to merely capitalise on the charms of children and landscape. Indeed, although bathed almost throughout in bright sunshine, the film has a hard edge with never a hint of sentimentality. Hou always makes his audience work hard at making connections leading to understanding. Here he goes one step further by placing his young protagonists in an insecure world that strains their limited resources of comprehension and understanding. The small girl understands little so spends her time clinging to a single toy, more often than not a pink model of an electric fan. Between them the children have to cope with barely understood encounters such as a mentally retarded girl who has been seduced by a lecherous birdcatcher and two youths who have mugged and robbed a truck driver. Even the children themselves are no angels. The girl, irked by being left out of the group of boys' swimming games, reacts by throwing their clothes in the river, while earlier, the boys tease a tortoise by driving a remotely controlled toy car at it. Even the eponymous Grandpa is not the nice old buffer that the title might convey. He is a country doctor and something of a tetchy martinet. Although not overtly unkind, he is obviously put out by anything that upsets his routine even to the extent of angrily attacking his son's moped with a bar of wood when he learns he has got his girlfriend pregnant. Make no mistake, the charm of childhood as depicted in a film like "The Railway Children" or even the wonderment of seeing things through innocent eyes - the marvellous "Pather Panchali" - are not part of this equation. Even what seems at first sight to be an idyllic river valley is scarred by an ugly road flyover. In his completely unsentimental depiction of childhood Hou has given us a work of piercing observation and integrity.

A master piece from director Hou Hsiao-Shien.

Although a different culture, somehow it brought back memories of childhood.

If u are reading this i would suggest you to watch it.

All the best!!

When their mother is forced to stay in the hospital for a prolonged period of time, Ting-Ting (a four year old girl) and Tung-Tung (an eleven year old boy) are taken by their uncle to spend the summer with their grandfather, a doctor in a small, rural town. There are some cliches in the film. The strict, imposing grandfather who at first doesn't seem to like the kids (I saw this just last week in Ford's Wee Willie Winkie) and the crazy lady who later saves one of the children's lives come quickly to mind. A scene where Ting-Ting gives her stuffed animal to a recovering patient of her grandfather's made me cringe a bit. But other than that, it's a rather wonderful movie. The two children in particular are fantastic. When Tung-Tung first meets up with local children, they have a battle between his remote control car and another boy's pet turtle (probably not the best scene to watch if you're a member of PETA, however). In another scene, the boys race their turtles. And there are more. The uncle, kind of the black sheep of the family, has a good subplot, as well. Edward Yang, the director of Yi Yi, has a small role as the children's father. It's too bad this of all of Hou's movies is unavailable. I only liked Flowers of Shanghai better. 8/10.

Tung-Tung and his 4-year old sister (Sun Cheeng-Lee) spend the summer in the country with their grandparents when their mother is hospitalized due to a gall bladder problem. Told from the point of view of 11-year old Tung-Tung (Wang Chi-Kwang), Hou Hsiao-hsien's Summer at Grandpa's is a sublime meditation on growing up and its inevitable loss of innocence. Hou shows how the children try to insulate themselves from the outside world but can never quite escape it, being compelled to include adult events in their life of which they have little comprehension. Ting-Ting writes beautiful letters to his parents that show a delicate sensitivity but also a lack of understanding of what the adults around him are up to.

In typical Hou fashion, each character has strong points and weaknesses. The grandfather (Koo Chuen), a doctor, is loving but also harshly judgmental, forbidding the children's uncle to marry his girlfriend, and the uncle shows an immaturity that belies his age. The children also are complex characters whose reactions reflect their inability to express their feelings. For example, when the boys go swimming without her, Tung-Tung lashes out by taking their clothes and floating them down the river. One of Hou's most accessible works and one of his warmest, Summer at Grandpa's contains a hint of melodrama, but it is balanced with Hou's typical sense of the natural rhythm and flow of life.