Film Forum

(1984) “A young boy and his sister spend a summer at their grandparents' house in the country while their mother recuperates from an illness; they while away the hours climbing trees, swimming in a stream, searching for missing cattle, and coming to uneasy grips with the enigmatic and sometimes threatening realities of adult life. The fine, unsentimental attention to childhood incident, as well as the vignettish formal structure, recalls the work of Japan's Hiroshi Shimizu, a child-genre specialist of the 30s and 40s whose Four Seasons of Children this film closely resembles, though Hou's social concerns run deeper, and his spare, contemplative styling--the precise formal center around which a world accumulates--sets him squarely among the modernists.” – Pat Graham, The Chicago Reader. 16mm print courtesy of Bard College. Approx. 93 min.

Part of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Coming of Age Trilogy.

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