# Coming Home (归来) (2014 film)
**Coming Home** (归来) is a 2014 Chinese drama film directed by [Zhang Yimou](https://www.edgepedia.org/zhang-yimou) (张艺谋), adapted from [Yan Geling](https://www.edgepedia.org/yan-geling)'s (严歌苓) novel *The Criminal Lu Yanshi* (陆犯焉识) and starring [Gong Li](https://www.edgepedia.org/gong-li) (巩俐) and Chen Daoming (陈道明) as a couple separated for years by political imprisonment, who reunite after the wife has lost her memory of her husband[1](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/gui-lai/) • [2](https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2014/02_14/021814_cominghome.html). It screened Out of Competition at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and opened in China on May 16, 2014[1](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/gui-lai/) • [3](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/04-23/6097303.shtml).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / source | Zhang Yimou; adapted from Yan Geling's novel *The Criminal Lu Yanshi*, screenplay by Zou Jingzhi (邹静之)[2](https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2014/02_14/021814_cominghome.html) |
| Cast | Gong Li as Feng Wanyu (冯婉瑜), Chen Daoming as Lu Yanshi (陆焉识), Zhang Huiwen (张慧雯) as their daughter Dandan[4](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/259943) |
| Festival | Out of Competition, 2014 Cannes Film Festival; 111 minutes[1](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/gui-lai/) |
| China release | May 16, 2014; 82 million yuan in the first three days, 210 million yuan by May 25[3](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/04-23/6097303.shtml) • [5](https://www.chinanews.com/cul/2014/05-28/6222270.shtml) |
| Screenplay drafts | 46 drafts counted by the screenwriter; setting moved from Shanghai to a northern city[5](https://www.chinanews.com/cul/2014/05-28/6222270.shtml) • [6](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2014-04-22/07304130590.shtml) |
| Major awards | Golden Horse Award for Best Original Film Score (Chen Qi Gang); Golden Horse nominations for Best Actress, Best New Performer, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Sound Effects[7](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3125472/awards/) |
| Critical score | 89% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 79 reviews[8](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/coming_home_2014) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and source novel
The film follows Lu Yanshi and Feng Wanyu, a devoted couple forced apart when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the [Cultural Revolution](https://www.edgepedia.org/cultural-revolution). Released in the last days of that period, he returns home to find that his wife has amnesia and cannot recognize him; she waits patiently for a husband who is already beside her, and Lu resolves to reawaken her memory[1](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/gui-lai/). An earlier return, in the 1970s, ends badly: Lu escapes the labor farm to see his family, but his teenage daughter Dandan, hoping to dance the lead in the ballet *Red Detachment of Women* and fearing being labeled as having a bad family background, blocks the meeting and betrays her father to the authorities[3](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/04-23/6097303.shtml) • [9](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/1158).
The source novel spans decades of Lu Yanshi's life, from a cosmopolitan young intellectual to a weathered man in his sixties, and examines an intellectual's pursuit of spiritual freedom under political turbulence[10](https://m.fx361.com/news/2014/1121/11303030.html). Yan Geling based it partly on stories of her own grandfather and another relative who was sent to labor camps in the northwest[11](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1246747). Zhang Yimou read the first draft and told her he wanted to film it; for the adaptation he took essentially the novel's final 30 pages, the part describing Lu's return after rehabilitation, which Yan Geling said condensed the whole book, including the meaning of the name Yanshi[12](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/2014/2014-05-14/203720.html). In her own interview she described the film as using the last twenty-odd pages, and explained the title as referring not only to Lu's return but to Feng Wanyu's: through amnesia she erases the terrifying and humiliating memories of her life, a return of her own, though one that can never reach the original family[11](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1246747).
## Writing and production
Screenwriter Zou Jingzhi, who had previously written Zhang's *[Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles](https://www.edgepedia.org/riding-alone-for-thousands-of-miles)*, began work at the end of 2011 after the literary planner Zhou Xiaofeng brought him the novel. His contract was a single page signed with Zhang personally, after Zhang's split with his former production company. The screenplay went through 46 drafts by Zou's own count, grouped into four large versions; an early draft covered Lu's escape from the northwest labor farm to Shanghai, and its final scenes were later moved to the front of the finished film[5](https://www.chinanews.com/cul/2014/05-28/6222270.shtml).
A key decision came shortly before the 2013 Spring Festival, when Zou and Zhang settled on three characters and a style Zou described as plain, preferring awkwardness over cleverness, with the stillness of deep water. The story's setting was also moved from Shanghai in the novel to a northern city, because both writer and director were northerners, an earlier Shanghai draft had felt inauthentic, and the principal actors were northerners as well[5](https://www.chinanews.com/cul/2014/05-28/6222270.shtml) • [6](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2014-04-22/07304130590.shtml).
Zhang framed the project as a return to a quiet, pure mode of filmmaking after years of commercial spectacles such as *Hero*, *House of Flying Daggers*, and *The Flowers of War*. He called it, in his own words, a return from visual blockbusters to restrained storytelling and from commercial demands toward more intellectual ones[13](https://culture.people.com.cn/n/2014/0519/c87423-25033366.html). Although an art film, it was shot with 4K technology and also released in IMAX format, a combination usually reserved for commercial blockbusters[14](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/05-11/6156573.shtml).
## Release and box office
[Sony Pictures Classics](https://www.edgepedia.org/sony-pictures-classics) acquired all rights for North America, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand in February 2014; the film marked the twelfth collaboration between Zhang and the Sony Classics team, dating back to the 1991 release of *Raise the Red Lantern*. LeVision Pictures was the primary financier and distributed the film in China[2](https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2014/02_14/021814_cominghome.html).
The film opened across China on May 16, 2014, after more than two years without a Zhang Yimou release. It earned over 82 million yuan in its first three days, and by May 25 had reached 210 million yuan, the fastest an art film had crossed the 200 million yuan mark[13](https://culture.people.com.cn/n/2014/0519/c87423-25033366.html) • [5](https://www.chinanews.com/cul/2014/05-28/6222270.shtml). In the United States it was released in limited theaters in September 2015 and grossed $377,400[8](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/coming_home_2014).
## Reception and awards
Critics singled out the two leads. The *People's Daily* overseas edition reported near-unanimous praise for Gong Li and Chen Daoming, noting that close-ups occupy a third of the 111-minute film and that the emotional high points, such as the separation on the railway footbridge and the piano scene, carry almost no dialogue and depend entirely on the actors' precision. The same review observed that Zhang abandoned his trademark saturated colors for a cooler, paler palette[15](https://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2014-05/23/content_1431835.htm). On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 89% from 79 reviews, with a critics' consensus calling it "the rare tearjerking melodrama with sociopolitical subtext"[8](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/coming_home_2014).
At the 2014 Golden Horse Awards the film won Best Original Film Score for Chen Qi Gang and received nominations for Best Actress (Gong Li), Best New Performer (Zhang Huiwen), Best Adapted Screenplay (Zou Jingzhi), and Best Sound Effects[7](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3125472/awards/) • [9](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/1158). Gong Li also won the Shanghai Film Critics Award for Best Actress and the Golden Deer for Best Actress at the Changchun Film Festival, and Zhang Huiwen won the Asian Film Award for Best Newcomer[7](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3125472/awards/).
## Themes and controversy
Zhang identified three themes: devoted love, in Feng Wanyu's lifelong waiting for a husband standing beside her; self-sacrifice, in Lu Yanshi's willingness to lose himself to accompany her; and rebuilding, as Lu must reconstruct his relationship with the daughter who betrayed him and as people must rebuild trust and public morality after the Cultural Revolution. He connected the film to his own experience of the period, when he was between 16 and 26 years old, and argued that the era's disruption of traditional ethics left aftereffects that Chinese society still needed to repair[3](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/04-23/6097303.shtml).
The film's restraint toward history drew sustained debate in China. A commentary in *China Art News* framed the central question as whether the film's sketchy treatment of the Cultural Revolution was meaningful blank space or simply emptiness. Supporters valued its refusal to dramatize history and its focus on ordinary emotional life; critics argued it avoided history's sharpest edges and left the motivation for Lu's escape, a plot point on which the whole narrative turns, unexplained. The same commentary noted Zhang's stated reasons: much of the novel's long historical span was difficult to depict, and he wanted a creative breakthrough rather than another *To Live*[16](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/2014/2014-05-30/205781.html). Zhang himself said that after nearly forty years, films about the period should find different modes of expression, and that he deliberately wanted something different from *[To Live](https://www.edgepedia.org/to-live-1994-film)*, his earlier Cultural Revolution film[17](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/05-20/6191316.shtml).
## References
1. [GUI LAI (Coming Home), Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/gui-lai/)
2. [Zhang Yimou Comes Home To Sony Pictures Classics, Sony Pictures Entertainment press release, February 18, 2014](https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2014/02_14/021814_cominghome.html)
3. [张艺谋谈电影《归来》：人心需要重建一座城, 中国新闻网 (中国青年报), April 23, 2014](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/04-23/6097303.shtml)
4. [Coming Home (2014), The Movie Database](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/259943)
5. [编剧邹静之谈《归来》：修改46稿 曾与张艺谋争论, 中国新闻网 (北京青年报), May 28, 2014](https://www.chinanews.com/cul/2014/05-28/6222270.shtml)
6. [《归来》张艺谋心态回归 憾主演无缘戛纳, 新浪娱乐 (新闻晨报), April 22, 2014](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2014-04-22/07304130590.shtml)
7. [Coming Home (2014) Awards, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3125472/awards/)
8. [Coming Home (2014), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/coming_home_2014)
9. [歸來 Coming Home, 台北金馬影展](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/1158)
10. [欲"归"而终未"来"——简评电影《归来》, 电影评介, 2014年第14期](https://m.fx361.com/news/2014/1121/11303030.html)
11. [专访严歌苓："归来"的不只陆焉识, 澎湃新闻, May 19, 2014](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1246747)
12. [张艺谋：留白的拍法，留什么很要紧, 中国作家网 (中国艺术报), May 14, 2014](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/2014/2014-05-14/203720.html)
13. [张艺谋谈《归来》：想表达对历史文化的思考, 人民网-人民日报, May 19, 2014](https://culture.people.com.cn/n/2014/0519/c87423-25033366.html)
14. [张艺谋：《归来》不是商业片 是自己的思考, 中国新闻网 (华西都市报), May 11, 2014](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/05-11/6156573.shtml)
15. [《归来》有味道 醇而不烈, 人民日报海外版, May 23, 2014](https://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2014-05/23/content_1431835.htm)
16. [留白？还是空白？——《归来》的创作空缺与传播争议, 中国作家网 (中国艺术报), May 30, 2014](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/2014/2014-05-30/205781.html)
17. [张艺谋谈《归来》：斗室里反映出时代感, 中国新闻网, May 20, 2014](https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2014/05-20/6191316.shtml)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2010 to 2014 › Biographical and historical drama films*
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