Screen International by Allan Hunter
Mrs. Fang is unreservedly voyeuristic, the camera maintaining its own vigil over Xiuying who is seen in lengthy, merciless close-ups staring straight ahead.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
China, France, Germany · 2018
1h 26m
Director Wang Bing
Starring
Genre Documentary
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In a quiet village in southern China, Fang Xiuying is sixty-seven years old. Having suffered from Alzheimer's for several years, with advanced symptoms and ineffective treatment, she was sent back home. Now, bedridden, she is surrounded by her relatives and neighbors, as they witness and accompany her through her last days.
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Screen International by Allan Hunter
Mrs. Fang is unreservedly voyeuristic, the camera maintaining its own vigil over Xiuying who is seen in lengthy, merciless close-ups staring straight ahead.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
There is no denying the visceral power of Wang’s insistence on looking encroaching death, as it were, in the eye and the filmmaker exercises appropriate restraint when the final moment does come.
This is a merciless film, and whether the process of teasing its meaning out for yourself feels like a punishment or a reward will depend entirely on your patience and your point of view.
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
It's a simple, cumulatively shattering record of life as we rarely see it captured in narrative or documentary cinema.
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