Chuen hua mon lu

The film tells the story of three generations of one family, over a period of ten years. Kun-cheng (a role by Lee Kang-sheng, the protagonist in Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive l’Amour) lives together with his wife Ah-hsui and their little daughter on his parents’ farm. They are expecting the birth of their second child. But the birth of the little boy is accompanied by the death of Kun-cheng’s wife and he swears never to marry again. He remains behind bitter and decides to leave caring for his children to his parents. He leaves the farm and goes to work in the building trade in another area. There he meets the young widow Ah-yun andthey are soon living together. Kun-cheng insists that their lives are kept strictly separate. A few years later, his mother has a stroke and her granddaughter has to look after her.Lin Cheng-shen’s self-assured, subtle début film is compared with autobiographical films by Hou Hsiao-hsien (A Time to Live and a Time to Die) and Wu Nien-jen (A Borrowed Life). Lin wrote the screenplay with his wife Ko Su-ching. He used static compositions and natural lighting to portray the central theme – the role of chance in every family’s life. The title is a reference to the roamings of the young Kun-cheng, but also to the everyday worries and joys of family life.