Quitting a serious addiction is undoubtedly hard to comprehend for those with no direct experience of the struggle. This is the story of real life actor Jia Hongshen, playing himself, whose plunge into addiction to various substances led to isolation from family and friends, the loss of his budding career, and near self-destruction. Although somewhat contrived, this chronicle of one family's struggle to save the life of their drug addicted 29 year-old son is powerful. Director Yang Zhang softens the contrivance by his creation of a play within the play.

In the opening sequence of the film, Zhang is interviewing Jia in preparation for writing a play about this period in Jia's life. This was a very personal project. The director got to know Jia when they worked together on a stage production of Kiss of the Spider Woman, which Zhang was directing. The speed and ferocity with which Jia becomes dependent on some pretty hard drugs was unsettling. These interviews give way to the narrative drama beginning with the arrival in Beijing of Jia's parents, also playing themselves. They have retired early and left their home in the country to come and live with Jia and his sister, who share an apartment. In a not so subtle signpost, a Taxi Driver poster hanging on his bedroom door reveals all about Jia's attitude toward the world. His sister has been paying the bills and trying to keep things together with mounting frustration over her brother's deterioration. He is surly, unpleasant, demanding and hostile.

He also has a sense of entitlement, contempt for the peasant ways of his parents, and an annoying personal vanity. He does things to extremes with little thought of the consequences. Instead, he questions the really big things like the meaning of his life and works to answer the unanswerable. He makes his father squeeze into tight jeans that are two sizes too small because he does not want to be seen with this country bumpkin. He can't see the forest because of the trees. Jia, who at some point previously had abandoned doing anything, other than drugs, agrees to go walking or biking with his father, evidently to enjoy humiliating him. Because these people are playing themselves, there is at once an authenticity and an artifice about these painful scenes. His mother's anger is close to the surface and this in turn causes tension between husband and wife. As in real life, quite literally in this case, one member of a family with a destructive obsession wreaks havoc on them all. In this family, it is the relationship between Jia and his father that is key to his rehabilitation. As in Zhang's previous film, Shower, family is central, and it is through his parents' subdued perseverance that Jia does not fall fatally into the abyss.

After some success in films, Jia began dabbling in drugs while working on Spider Woman. While some others were able to partake without becoming controlled, Jia went too far. Already possessing a temperament that was conducive to it, the magic connection that occurred between Jia

and the drugs remains a puzzle. The limitation of the film is its failure to explore this process. That said, its strength is the agonizing depiction of the daily trials leading eventually to an assault by Jia on his father. It is the last straw and results in his being confined in a hospital. Again, for no discernible reason, beyond a surface one of not wanting to be tied down, Jia chooses to stay and confront his demons.

In a moment reminiscent of Abbas Kiarostami's A Taste of Cherry when the camera pulls back from the grave at the end of that film to reveal the film crew, Zhang's camera reveals his stage set of the Beijing apartment. The harshness of the circumstance is thus made more palatable. We are reminded that they have all survived this ordeal. The visual style contrasts the troublesome emotional landscape with clear blue skies and soothing greens making for a compelling polarity. Those looking for an insight into the secret of how rehab works will have to look elsewhere, but this is an honest look at one family's experience.

Hongshen Jia: Hongshen	Xiuling Chai: Hongshen's mother
Fengsen Jia: Hongshen's Father	Tong Wang: Hongshen's sister
Director: Yang Zhang