40
Coming Home sinks into a conventional tragic romance rut that not even engaging performances by Gong and Chen can save.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
91
Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty
Yimou’s lovely import is the kind of lump-in-your-throat drama they don’t make much anymore, at least in Hollywood. Watching Coming Home you’ll wonder why that is — and who we can write a letter to to fix it.
88
Coming Home is a film in which everyone's dreams are irrevocably broken, the pieces too small to grasp, let alone pick up.
67
While tears will be jerked, heartstrings plucked and throats enlumpened, it has to go down as a disappointment in the director’s catalogue.
80
Heartbreaking in its depiction of ordinary lives affected by political upheaval, this ode to the fundamental values that survive even under such dire circumstances has an epic gravity that recalls another great historical romance, “Doctor Zhivago.”
75
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
It’s a less pointed and implicitly feminist work than such classics as "Raise The Red Lantern" and "The Story Of Qiu Ju" —one could even call it a shameless weepie. Still, it’s a welcome throwback to one of the most emotionally wrenching actor-director partnerships in film history.
100
Elegant and wrenching, Coming Home is a quiet, haunting masterpiece.
90
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
Zhang and his sterling actors have made something fairly unforgettable about the tragedy of forgetting.
90
Village Voice by Stephanie Zacharek
Coming Home obviously has historical and political significance for Chinese who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and for families that were torn apart by it. But Zhang tells this particular story in a deeply personal way — the time and place of its setting have a specific meaning, but its emotional contours spread out into something bigger.
60
A sweet yet suspect romantic drama.