Home Away is an award winning Art House Drama Film.
It’s the story of Mr. Zhou who, in order to purchase the VIP membership of a nursing home, wants to seize the opportunity of the relocation of his house by arranging a fake marriage with Mrs. Dong to acquire more money out of the compensation. But Mrs. Dong, fearing karma, has her doubts all along.
Zhou Ping, Mr. Zhou's son, on the other hand, sees the relocation as an opportunity to buy a school estate for his daughter. Yun, Mrs. Dong's nanny who's from Sichuan Province, is suddenly informed that her brother has been hit by a car in her hometown, and, therefore, in urgent need of 100,000 RMB to pay for the operation. When she comes to know of Mr. Zhou's plan of the "fake marriage", she offers to help him out but asks for 100,000 RMB in advance.
Having learned about her father-in-law's intention of marrying Mrs. Dong, Huang Lili, Zhou Ping's wife, has stolen his household register. As a result, Mr. Zhou, when he is about to give the bankbook with a deposit of 100,000 to Yun, finds that his household register is gone in which the bankbook is tucked. In the meantime, Mrs. Dong is suffering from a fall after an eye operation and her daughter finds out that Yun has been seeing doctors using her mother's Medicare card. Unable to get in touch with her, Yun's husband who has been in the countryside has also arrived in Shanghai.
First of all, this film allows us to ask many important questions about Chinese Society. Then HOME AWAY has the big value to have a strong visual identity given by Jong Lin’s cinematography and the frames and camera movements perfectly chosen by the director Oliver Yan to convey the conditions of the main characters.
The choice from the beginning to shoot the first sequence behind a glass it’ very strong. And from this incipit we can deduce the quality of the work of this director. The visual impact this film has is so strong that it makes the audience fell in front of a documentary in stead of a feature without losing the pleasure of the aesthetic research that is very rigorous and consistent with the theme and mood of the film.
This sense of strong reality is convey also by the choice of an essential sound design, which everything is diegetic.
The performances of the actors Huang Lu and Xu Caigen are also very really realistic and authentic and make each scene really believable.
The rhythm of the editing has the power to perfectly present each part of the film to the audience.
The pace of the script is perfectly balanced and never predictable, essential and precise.