MovieMartyr.com - A Summer at Grandpa's

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s easygoing but heartfelt tale A Summer at Grandpa’s is astutely told from a childlike point of view without falling into any of the pitfalls that hamper most movies with young protagonists. Following Ting-Ting and Tung-Tung, a preteen brother and sister who must leave Taipei to live with their grandparents in the country one summer after their mother takes ill, the film has mature themes present, but in presenting them it never sacrifices the innocence that the children possess. Talk about topics like abortion and armed robbery is frequent, but it’s the scenes where the children interact with each other that seem the most exciting, perhaps because so few films take delight in something as simple as watching children at play. When mature themes do arise, it’s usually through snippets of overheard dialogue that the children only partly comprehend. Ting-Ting writes letters back home to his ailing parents that express his frustration that the motivations of the adults don’t make more sense, but Hou doesn’t leave the audience in the dark. His camera lingers after then children leave, giving us information that the children aren’t privy to. Instead of using his technique to distance his audience from the action, as he often opts to in his later films, the director’s tone here is inclusive and warm. There are hints at the panning, master-shot dominated style that would later come to define Hou’s distinctive work, but mostly his direction is more conventional in Grandpa’s. Hou’s relative invisibility serves the story, however, allowing the mood, pretty scenery, and accomplished naturalistic performances to take center stage.

Although Hou never feels it necessary to burden Grandpa’s with melodramatic affectation, he still manages to convey the sense of confused hurt that Ting-Ting and Tung-Tung feel. His attention to the nuances in their behavior, such as the way that the boys rebuff Tung-Tung, adding to her loneliness, tells the audience much about the hurt that the kids feel and their inability to articulate it. What most centers the film’s point of view as a childlike one, however, is the way that the moods that come and go are rather superficial, even if they’re felt intensely. These kids are sometimes depressed, but they aren’t really introspective. Their most ardent attention is focused on whatever is happening the moment. When things go wrong for them, everything is awful, but when the ordeal is over, their tone perks up. Lessons are learned, but not every event in the film is a paradigm-altering one. Including that youthful lack of an emotional attention span is perceptive and makes the kids much more believable than they would be if Hou had chosen to give them a more conventional, adult character arc. Few filmmakers seem as adept as Hou is here at showing both the complexities of being a child stuck in an adult world and the childhood pleasures of being able to totally isolate oneself from that world with blithe insularity.

Perhaps it’s because their stories are being told in such close proximity to a child’s point of view, but some of the adults in A Summer at Grandpa’s seem to act with the same sort of short-temperedness and poor judgment that is usually associated with kids. Hou points out that parental concerns don’t stop once a child reaches adulthood in a subplot that deals with Ting-Ting’s irresponsible uncle. He’s shown sneaking around behind his father’s back, acting without considering consequence, and talking to Ting-Ting more casually than any other adult character. His tendency toward rash behavior, especially when contrasted with Grandpa’s tendency toward the opposite, suggests that maturity isn’t something that automatically arrives with adulthood, but instead something that is present in some adult actions, but not others. That Grandpa himself even lapses into a petulant fit or two is indicative of Hou’s fundamentally humane unwillingness to present any unassailable model for behavior. The introduction of Tung-Tung’s makeshift maternal figure, a wandering retarded woman, only further explores this belief that childlike moments exist in all adults, and it’s that theme that most ably justifies the film’s point of view in a film intended for adult audiences. A Summer at Grandpa’s sees the moments where Ting-Ting steps up to adult understanding as actions that are just as thoughtfully considered as the ones where the adults resolve their problems, and similarly suggests that their lapses of maturity are equitable.

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11-21-02

Jeremy Heilman