Fresh
The film's father-son friction grows occasionally repetitious, but it springs from a sensitive, well-written melodrama that earns its emotions with tender sincerity.
Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times
Overview
Sunflower is the story of the Zhang family in Beijing father, mother and son across three decades, centering on the tensions and misunderstandings between father and son. Nine-year-old Xiangyang is having the time of his life, free of adult supervision until the day he meets the father he can hardly remember. Having spent years away, he returns with strong ideas about his son learning to draw. But Xiangyang chafes under his father's constant rules and soon stages his own revolution against the lessons enforced.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
69%
Tomatometer
Fresh
Sunflower succeeds as both a moving family drama and a microcosm of China's social history since the 1970s.
Jason Anderson, Globe and Mail
Rotten
Although filled with a plethora of dramatic events, including earthquakes and floods, the film never achieves real dramatic momentum, due in large part to its needlessly sluggish pacing.
Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
Fresh
Like Douglas Sirk without the throw pillows, Sunflower is a shamelessly old-fashioned melodrama performed with such sincerity that resistance is futile.
Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times
Rotten
Paging John O'Hara. One would have to reach back to those melodramatic family potboilers of the '50s to find such an unfettered blast of guilt-tripping and misdirected love.
Jan Stuart, Newsday
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