Memories Look at Me

Memories Look at Me

2012. China. Written and directed by Song Fang. With Ye Yu-zhu, Song Di-jin, Song Fang. Song Fang’s moving, insightful debut feature is a tough yet compassionate look at how the past informs our present. Director Song—best known for her role in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Flight of the Red Balloon—plays herself as she goes to stay with her aging parents in Nanjing. Many of the director’s family members also play themselves, and the film beautifully captures the many intimate, awkward details of a return to your childhood home as an adult—a single woman, no less—when the past has forever altered familiar relationships and every moment of the present. Winner, Best First Feature, 2012 Locarno Film Festival. Print courtesy Xstream Pictures. In Chinese; English subtitles. 87 min.