Director: Lü Bowen

Synopsis

On a summer weekend, a boy is stuck on an essay titled "Dad and Mom". As a drop of blood falls from his nose, he begins to think about his family. Most of the time there is only his mother; his father, busy with work and not good with words, seems to the boy more like "a stranger of a father". This weekend his father comes home, and their relationship warms as they go out together to buy a fountain pen and race each other, but a phone call takes the father away to work again. In tears, the boy runs home. Looking at the same scene as always, he goes back to his room, stops agonizing over his feelings about "me" and his parents, and bravely chooses to "start a new line", writing an essay on the common idea of "family happiness" and going through a bitter step in growing up. Beginning: the boy is stuck on the essay topic "Dad and Mom"; the hot summer weekend and the nosebleed leave him restless and anxious. His father comes home briefly, and the interaction between mother and son reveals the loneliness of the household and the father's distance. Development: the father takes the boy to buy a fountain pen, and a race shows a brief warming between father and son, but then a work call means he has to leave, and the boy's hopes are dashed. Climax: watching his father's back as he is about to leave, the boy cries, runs home and chooses to "start a new line" in his essay, covering his real feelings with a formulaic definition of happiness and reaching a kind of psychological "maturity". Ending: patches of light moving across the home, clothes with the ink stains washed out, and a new pen that writes smoothly without clogging leave a lingering question: is happiness as complete as it looks?