A Brief History Of A Family

The one-child policy was introduced in China in 1979, aimed at curbing population growth. Couples were therefore allowed to have only one child. This measure remained in effect until 2013.

With extreme formal elegance, a cold and detached direction that occasionally bursts into sudden aesthetic flourishes, A Brief History of a Family unfolds as a kind of frozen Parasite, blending Haneke’s entomological precision with Lanthimos’ aseptic violence. What we learn about Yan’s terrible family comes only through his stories—we are never given certainty as to whether they are true or the product of a calculated plan to elicit Tu’s parents’ pity. As for what happens to Tu, is it the result of chance, or is Yan himself orchestrating it? The protagonist’s social climb acts as a magnifying glass over bourgeois rituals in a China still marked by stark economic disparities between rich and poor. As in Pasolini’s legendary Teorema, the psychological depth of the characters emerges through their interactions with Yan. He exposes the problematic personalities of Tu’s family—numbed and anesthetized by their comfortable life.

Hints of homoerotic tension, violent impulses, the desire for motherhood stifled by political constraints, bourgeois ease that is in truth bourgeois ambiguity (as Chabrol taught!)—Yan manages only partially to penetrate these artificial equilibriums. The Eastern bourgeoisie, like its Western counterpart, has a hypocritical resilience that cushions external blows. The protagonist is at first absorbed into Tu’s family, only to be later expelled like a foreign body, until he disappears altogether—reduced to one of society’s invisible outcasts.

A Brief History of a Family is built out of a series of short sequences, each one a small gem of mise-en-scène. Static shots, tracking shots, wide frames, very few close-ups, an electronic soundtrack… each sequence becomes a vessel of allegories and layered ambiguities. As the narrative progresses, the viewer finds themselves watching the characters as if they were fish in an aquarium—creatures anesthetized by comfort, absorbed in their reassuring, muffled routines. Within these supposed certainties lies a son numbed by money, gradually replaced by Yan—intellectually lively and curious; a father emotionally absent yet hyper-ambitious; and a mother caring yet still traumatized by the one-child policy. Their dinners are icy negotiations over the son’s professional future, their apartment a microcosm detached from the outside world.

If in Hidden Haneke portrayed a European bourgeoisie threatened by external events, with socio-political discourse made explicit through the news bulletins the characters watched on television, in A Brief History of a Family there is no trace of the outside world. The film depicts a self-referential reality. Tu’s family becomes a metaphor for a nation still haunted by the sins of its distorted, distorting policies, yet indifferent to global events, focused only on its national interests.

It is an exquisitely controlled work, yet conceptually incendiary. A thriller that seems constantly on the verge of tipping into blood-soaked horror, but instead opts for a precise dissection of everyday madness—terrifying precisely because it hovers in suspension. Outbursts of violence, when they occur, are consistently muffled by the director, yet they resound silently in the unconscious. A Brief History of a Family generates ambiguous realities, populated by obsessive and obsessed characters, narrating social contexts where the boundary between victim and perpetrator, benign and malign, is blurred. Jianjie tells us—echoing Pasolini, Chabrol, Haneke, Lanthimos—that bourgeois society cannot tolerate disruptions or excessive emotion. Its mission is clear: to eliminate the outsider, unless the outsider is a faithful reproduction of itself.