Lost, Found 2018

[Nira Sun]

The movie that I’m introducing is called “Lost, Found”. It was released in 2018 in China. The movie was produced by Feng Xiaogang and directed by Lü Yue. This movie was also a remake of a 2016 South Korean film named “Missing”. The entire color theme of the movie was quite dark which made me feel sad in addition to the content of the movie.

What gave me the most impression of were the words narrated by the main actress towards the end of the movie:

“Our era demands so much from women. If you choose to become a career woman, some people will say that you neglect your family and are a bad mother. If you choose to become a full-tie mother, some people will think that having children is a woman’s natural duty and it doesn’t count as a career.”

This movie portraited three mothers who were experiencing different life difficulties as their life intertwined at the same time. Li Jie, one of the two main characters, was a divorce lawyer who had a nanny named Sun Fang, another main character. The nanny abducted Li’s daughter while she was taking care of her. Li then went on a crazy hunt for her daughter while she was in the middle of a custody lawsuit of own as well as of her client, a husband of a woman named Zhu Min. While in the process of looking for her daughter, Li also got to understand her nanny’s life a lot more which she didn’t have time to do before.

These three women are three different representations of women in modern society. For students to understand the roles of women nowadays, I was thinking about having students to compare the life of these three women. For example, their job status, their financial status, their fights over custody of children, and their mental health status. At the same time, we may also take a look at all three husbands’ situations and how their behavior changed the life of the three women. This will help students to have a deeper understanding of different gender roles are treated or interpreted by the society.

Another big topic in this movie was about making choice. Li said to Zhu once; “I’m a working mom with a child. I work so hard because I don’t ever want to end up in your position.” Zhu made the choice of being a full-time mother who were now having hard time winning the custody of her child due to financial issue. LI believed that she had the right to choose because she had a career of her own. I would like to have all the female students to consider what type of woman they would choose to become one day and why is that. In terms of my male students, I would like them to think about their ideal virtues of women. Even though sometimes we are unable to truly understand someone else’s perspectives, we can still make the effort to agree with the disagreement. With that being said, students will get to present their thoughts to the other party followed by a Q&A session for them to thoroughly understanding each other’s points of view.

Overall, this is a great movie and 98% classroom-friendly, especially for high school classrooms. I think I will definitely implement this movie in my Mandarin 4 curriculum as part of the culture lesson. If anyone who is interested, this movie is available on YouTube for free with Chinese and English subtitles.

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