The Home Song Stories: a movie review

The Home Song Stories, based on a true story, stars Joan Chen as Rose. Joan Chen was born into a family of doctors and educated in China during the Mao era; she is considered the Elizabeth Taylor of China and delivers a powerful performance in this film, which won a slew of foreign awards.  Rose is a lost soul with two children who moves to Australia after marrying an Australian sailor she meets in Hong Kong.

In 2007, the film won awards from the Australian Film Institute; awards from the Golden Horse Film Festival; the Hawaii International Film Festival; the Torino International Festival of Young Cinema, and in 2008, it won the Film Critics Circle of Australia Award.

The film is set in the late 1960s, and the Australian sailor turns out to be an admirable character. See the film to discover why.

Later in the film, it is revealed that at sixteen Rose was sold to become a concubine to an older man, but she fell in love with her master’s younger brother, an artist, and they run off. A few years later, the love of Rose’s life dies from tuberculosis. To survive, Rose becomes a night-club singer who takes a string of lovers. The story is told from her young son’s point of view. Rose’s daughter is a teenager for most of the film.

Discover Not One Less, a film produced in China that went on to win eighteen international film awards. At the Venice Film Festival, it won the Golden Lion Award, the highest prize given to a film at this festival.

_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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3 Responses to The Home Song Stories: a movie review

  1. margot says:

    This movie sounds dramatically racy. I want to see it.

  2. Callahan says:

    Thanks. I didn’t know about this film, and I’m a fan of Joan Chen’s work.

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