Winter Memories 冬日往事

Description:

In a small town in the northeast of China in the early 1980s, Doudou enjoyed a happy childhood. His father, who worked at a state-run factory, was the boy's idol. Yet behind the calm and contented family lay the father's extramarital affair. When the affair came to light, the whole factory and the whole town were abuzz with gossip. Stripped of a promotion he had been due, the despondent father drank himself into a stupor and died under the wheels of a train. Doudou saw the scene of the accident and then witnessed his mother's hysterical fit. Deeply traumatized, the boy lost the ability to speak. From then on mother and son depended on each other for survival. Because of his muteness and the loss of his father, Doudou was shunned by his playmates, and his mother's tangled feelings toward his father colored her attitude toward the boy: she would no longer let him step outside the door. So Doudou lost his free and joyful childhood. To cure his muteness his mother tried every remedy, but nothing could restore his speech. One day, when his mother fell ill and took to her bed, Doudou summoned his courage and went out alone to help her. That outing changed the fate of both mother and son in dramatic fashion.