Together

Together is a likely candidate to become that one foreign-language film that jumps out of the art houses each year to become a mainstream phenomenon.

Viewers with a low tolerance for sentiment may balk, but the emotions are so true and the characters so appealing that the film should completely win you over.

To contextualize the story's lack of subtlety, it helps to see these casting choices as ongoing penance for the time when, as a boy, Chen denounced his own father to the Red Guard.

It may be a crowd-pleasing escapism, but it's that feel-good shmaltz that ultimately plays the film off-key.

The film doesn't amount to an emotionally palpable experience. Most of the stops it attempts to pull out are rusty. The movie ends with a gigantic lump in its throat, one that would take a tall glass of Barbara Stanwyck to wash down.

The performances are all terrific, but Together never jells as a compelling narrative.

Torpid, syrupy melodrama from the Chinese director of 1993's "Farewell My Concubine."