“Brief History of a Family‘s cinematic elements combined give the film the classy, detached yet haunting feel it needs.”

There is something undeniably Hitchcockian about Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie’s debut feature Brief History of a Family, which screens at this year’s Berlinale in their Panorama section after world premiering at Sundance. Originally trained to be a bioengineer, Lin Jianjie (AKA: JJ Lin) left science and his native China to go study filmmaking at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. But did that science background ever leave him? It seems that the answer is ‘not really’, as microphotographic videos help the filmmaker tell the story of a well-to-do middle-class couple who didn’t really get to choose their only child. In the final stretch of this tight, 99-minutes long film, the images, as if viewed under a microscope, inspire the mood but also direct the emotions in a visually stunning sequence. In his Director’s Notes Lin explains: “Having majored in biology as an undergraduate, I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that the micro world often holds a mirror to the macro world. In this film, I examine a family both as a living cell going through changes on multiple levels, and as a cell of our evolving society, which inevitably shapes the psyche and sentiments of its people.“

Brief History of a Family quickly sets its haunting tone with the first shots from behind of a teenage boy hanging onto exercise bars in a school courtyard, against an idyllic green background, accompanied by metallic sounding music. The almost still moment, suspended in time and space, is quickly shattered by a rogue basketball which hits the boy and causes him to fall to the ground, injuring his knee. From there, the film never loses its ominous feel, as two teenage boys first meet, then become unlikely friends, and afterwards begin to fight for one set of parents’ attention. Wei (Lin Muran) is the couple’s rightful only child — the result of China’s now abolished one-child policy which began in 1980 and ended recently, in 2016 — while Shuo (Sun Xilun) is the outsider. These two are as different as night and day; Wei is outgoing, self-assured, and a fencing fanatic also obsessed with video games, while Shuo is studious, quiet and thoughtful, yet with an edge.

It is this edge, this disquietude which Lin communicates so well through sleek, nearly silent shots, brilliantly photographed by DP Zhang Jiahao, interrupted only by the occasional recordings of a Bach sonata played by Mr. Tu (Zu Feng), Wei’s father. Or the self-help tapes played by Mrs. Tu (Guo Keyu), a former flight attendant whose life seems stuck between two men, husband and son, who don’t pay her much attention.

Shuo quickly becomes the child Mrs. Tu never got to have with her husband, and they both welcome his unexpected visits while trying to nurture his needs. Shuo discloses that his mom died in childbirth and his father is an alcoholic who beats him — even showing bruises to support his stories. He plays on their sense of guilt at having more and knows how to manipulate the family to his advantage. But we, as an audience peeking in, keep wondering what is true and what is the kind of story others want to hear. While there is definitely a likeness in this tale to stories like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Saltburn, to me this felt more like Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite — the have-nots vs. the haves of this world, and the dangers of the two crossing paths. Whatever you read into it, Brief History of a Family is not going to disappoint with its simple, elegant telling of a strange tale, edited to tight perfection by Per K. Kirkegaard.

Food and its preparation, but also the enjoyment of it, play a huge part in the story, one of many examples of Xu Yao’s sublime production design. There are two central scenes which involve a live fish, later eaten as part of the family’s meal, which still live hauntingly in my imagination. Lin’s greatest talent lies in leaving some questions unanswered, which one would expect to be the work of a filmmaker much more experienced (read: older) than one directing his feature debut. His sure hand in telling the story of a family turned upside down by the arrival of a stranger feels like the work of a veteran director, but also a screenwriter with plenty of scripts under his belt. Built on phenomenally understated performances that never hint at the final outcome, but keep us interested in the story throughout, and with excellent aural work through Toke Brorson Odin’s haunting original music and Margot Testemale’s sound design, Brief History of a Family‘s cinematic elements combined give the film the classy, detached yet haunting feel it needs. And you’ll never see a more genius use of a Champion-brand T-shirt than the way it is handled by the two young leads in the film.

Image copyright: First Light Films, Films du Milieu, Tambo Films