Pushing Hands
(Tui shou)

Beneath Pushing Hands’ apparent sweetness, Ang Lee crafts a subdued, almost choreographed drama about a culture clash and the difficulty of loving without rejecting one’s roots. In the silence of shared meals, restrained gestures and the slowness of tai chi, the distance between a father from China and a son who has moved to America unfurls — two worlds struggling to breathe under the same roof. The film moves like an internal flow, where each loss of balance becomes a lesson. Lee already showcases his sharp eye for detail, filming space as the tension between inside and outside, between traditions that shelter and ones that confine. Pushing Hands is less about exile than about the search for a  common rhythm — a way to finally let energy circulate between people. Jérôme Baron