A Summer at Grandpa's

1984 [CHINESE]

Comedy / Drama

3
IMDb Rating 7.6/10 10 1906 1.9K

sibling relationship coming of age grandparents slice of life skinny dipping family

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Plot summary

A coming-of-age story about a young brother and sister whom spend a pivotal summer in the country with their grandparents.

Director

Hsiao-Hsien Hou Photo
Hsiao-Hsien Hou

Top cast

Edward Yang Photo
Edward Yang as
Cheng-Kuo Yen Photo
Cheng-Kuo Yen as A kid
Hsiu-Ling Lin Photo
Hsiu-Ling Lin as
Nai-Chu Ting Photo
Nai-Chu Ting as Tung-Tung's mother
720p.BLU
900.96 MB
1280*688
Chinese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  es  pt  it  tr  
23.976 fps
1 hr 38 min
Seeds 100+

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by howard.schumann 9 / 10

A sublime meditation on growing up

Tung-Tung and his 4-year old sister (Sun Cheeng-Lee) spend the summer in the country with their grandparents when their mother is hospitalized due to a gall bladder problem. Told from the point of view of 11-year old Tung-Tung (Wang Chi-Kwang), Hou Hsiao-hsien's Summer at Grandpa's is a sublime meditation on growing up and its inevitable loss of innocence. Hou shows how the children try to insulate themselves from the outside world but can never quite escape it, being compelled to include adult events in their life of which they have little comprehension. Ting-Ting writes beautiful letters to his parents that show a delicate sensitivity but also a lack of understanding of what the adults around him are up to. In typical Hou fashion, each character has strong points and weaknesses. The grandfather (Koo Chuen), a doctor, is loving but also harshly judgmental, forbidding the children's uncle to marry his girlfriend, and the uncle shows an immaturity that belies his age. The children also are complex characters whose reactions reflect their inability to express their feelings. For example, when the boys go swimming without her, Tung-Tung lashes out by taking their clothes and floating them down the river. One of Hou's most accessible works and one of his warmest, Summer at Grandpa's contains a hint of melodrama, but it is balanced with Hou's typical sense of the natural rhythm and flow of life.
Reviewed by kris747 8 / 10

Farewell to the summer, farewell to the childhood

This is such a beautifully made coming-of-age movie. For many other political and social reasons, people from China mainland lack information and understanding of Taiwan, even today, many websites from Taiwan are still being blocked from being visited from China Mainland, however, it's a great way to know more about a society through its movies. This movie is actually almost 3 years older than me, I bought this movie's DVD copy, and found it such a beautiful movie. It's a movie about realities, about the stories that all of us could have had experienced, everything was so common, realistic, and beautiful, the ending music of this movie is a song called "The Red Dragonfly", with that beautiful undecorated scenery of Taiwan countryside, the movie ended in a poem, a picture... Tung Tung went back to the big city of Taipei, and his summer was over, waiting for him ahead was the hard schoolwork and cruelty of the adult society, farewell to the summer, and farewell to the childhood... I realized that in the 1980s Taiwan had already had a high life standard, while the China Mainland is catching up today.
Reviewed by zetes 8 / 10

Quite a delightful little film

When their mother is forced to stay in the hospital for a prolonged period of time, Ting-Ting (a four year old girl) and Tung-Tung (an eleven year old boy) are taken by their uncle to spend the summer with their grandfather, a doctor in a small, rural town. There are some cliches in the film. The strict, imposing grandfather who at first doesn't seem to like the kids (I saw this just last week in Ford's Wee Willie Winkie) and the crazy lady who later saves one of the children's lives come quickly to mind. A scene where Ting-Ting gives her stuffed animal to a recovering patient of her grandfather's made me cringe a bit. But other than that, it's a rather wonderful movie. The two children in particular are fantastic. When Tung-Tung first meets up with local children, they have a battle between his remote control car and another boy's pet turtle (probably not the best scene to watch if you're a member of PETA, however). In another scene, the boys race their turtles. And there are more. The uncle, kind of the black sheep of the family, has a good subplot, as well. Edward Yang, the director of Yi Yi, has a small role as the children's father. It's too bad this of all of Hou's movies is unavailable. I only liked Flowers of Shanghai better. 8/10.
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