SHOWER A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Yang Zhang's SHOWER is a tale about the fragility of life and the importance of friendships and family. Set against the backdrop of a decades-old communal bathhouse, the story celebrates the simple pleasures of life, not the least of which being a long soak while kibitzing with your old buddies.
The movie opens with a suited gentleman getting quickly cleansed in a fully automated shower, almost exactly like a car wash. It is fast, efficient and mechanical, everything that the bathhouse owned all of his life by Mr. Liu (Zhu Xu) isn't.
This sweet little film charms us with its innocent images while never becoming saccharine. As it explores father-to-son and brother-to-brother relationships, the script and the acting do not have a moment that doesn't ring true.
Mr. Liu's son Da Ming (Pu Cun Xin) is a businessman who comes home for a visit by mistake. Da Ming's mentally-challenged brother, Er Ming (Jiang Wu), sent his brother a postcard that Da Ming took to mean that their father had died.
While there, an old friend pitches Da Ming a get-rich-quick business scheme -- not another dot-com, but the idea of fifty hot dog stands. With perfect irony, the two are inside an automated car wash at the time.
Most of the movie has the bathhouse regulars -- who have a median age of about 70 -- spend the day hanging out with each other as they bathe, talk, sleep, drink tea and get massaged. One of the major pastimes involves cricket battles in which -- horrors! -- one guy cheats.
The sweetly innocent times are interrupted by a story that harkens back to an even simpler time still. In a remote mountain region of China, it rains less than once a year we are told. In the story, the poor natives swap bowls of grain for bowls of water so that the young girl being married can have the traditional bath before her wedding. (The girl, miraculously, is sparkling clean even before she enters the water.)
Among the many delightful subplots is one concerning a shower singer. He belts out "O Solo Mio" with foghorn intensity so long as the water flows. Cut off his supply of H2O and his vocal chords collapse.
Nothing lasts forever. The bathhouse and all of the buildings around it are to be demolished in the name of progress. In their place will be a large high-rise apartment complex. The problem with such buildings, points out one of Mr. Liu's regulars, is that crickets don't go above the ground floor.
After watching SHOWER, progress doesn't look quite so sweet anymore.
SHOWER runs 1:32. The official reason for its being rated PG-13 is for "language and nudity." Well, excuse me. I don't recall any profanity and the nudity comes from some very discrete glimpses of men's rears in the bath. To lump this in with crude PG-13-rated films like THE IN CROWD and BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE is a travesty. Consider SHOWER to be a PG film. It should be fine for any kid old enough to be interested in the story and able to read the English subtitles -- the film is in Mandarin.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com
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