Shower

Liu & his mentally challenged son (Erming) run a Shower Station with customers of men and rarely woman and children. Liu’s elder son, Daming has returned from a misinterpreted letter from Erming, but decided to stay around for a while. Daming is trusted to keep an eye on Liu and their daily routine from running the shower station to jogging at night, but lost him. Luckily, Erming found his way back to the Shower House in the morning. 

Daming worries that Liu was starting to lose conscious, until he died in the bath while Erming was playing his game. Daming worries what will happen to Erming on his own in the Shower House, and the business itself.

It’s rare there’s a film that’s set mostly entirely in a shower station or bath house (at least not set in a gay bathhouse. Yet there’s a listing of those films. I don’t understand how specific those films are either.). There are some side characters that may or not contribute to the characters such as Mr. Wu with his cricket fights with others (think cockfight with crickets. Crocket fight. There’s Cricket Crocket from Cricket on a Hearth?), and singer that’s friend with Erming that can only sing under a shower. They may not be important as the main characters, but they’re here to show who actually go there. In the opening scene of the film, there’s a Public Shower Room that you can go in and out, similar to a car wash for people.

This film is similar to What’s Eating Gilbert Grapes, A Simple Plan, Rain Man, etc. Where Rain Man was based on an actual person, while debatable if he can knows Poker well. Erming’s disability of living in a loop has some advantage that he can run the business on his own as he knows the formula, so he’s not entirely helpless and useless. The downside is he can’t work any other jobs and do anything new in life. It’s made worst is when he loses the bath house and his home. Daming is the straight man/ normal man that’s mostly a blank slate to observe everything. Despite the straight man to the “funny” man is usually the boring part of the film as we’re better paying attention to the funny one. I said funny loosely, because Erming isn’t completely funny yet slightly annoying, but has his own interest to be a character. There’s a flashback involving the characters’ mom, but it was shown twice, and it felt like a separated film with different setting and tone that’s barely a footnote.

Shower is an interesting film. It’s not bad that I would scrub myself hard in the shower to get the bad feeling off. While I don’t know any film I would watch while I’m bathing in a shower, pool, or spa. Though there’s a good reason why not watch a film through electrical device in a watery container. The film itself is just a relaxing film to do a cannonball in.