Together (2002): C+

Chen Kaige goes soft and mushy with Together, an aggressively heartwarming tale about a teenage violin prodigy named Xiaochun (Tang Yun) and the peasant father Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi) who relocates the boy to Taiwain in order to further his musical career. Determined to have his son attain fame and fortune, Liu persistently hounds slovenly Professor Jiang (Wang Zhiwen) to mentor his offspring until he realizes that greater professional success is reachable with the tutelage of Professor Yu (played by Kaige himself). This instructor switcharoo, however, proves deeply upsetting to Xiaochun, who during his free time strikes up a platonic relationship with a materialistic beauty (Chen Hong). Though full of familiar Kaige elements (Western music, the contentious student-teacher relationship, the catharsis and salvation achievable through performance), Together lacks the depth or daring of the director’s prior work, its humanistic story never wavering from its serviceably warm and fuzzy path. More puzzling, though, is the fact that a censure of art’s (and the artist’s) potential for corruption via commercialization – a lesson likely born from Kaige’s own experiences making the English-language dud Killing Me Softly – is delivered by such a mainstream-pandering inspirational melodrama.