We had to hire an engineer to design it, and then another one to actually build it, with tubes going all over the place. Yang is describing the elaborate automatic shower set-piece that opens his new feature, Shower . Designed as a sort of human car wash, the automatic shower allows the user to simply stand on a turntable and be sprayed with soap, buffed by rolling sponges, rinsed off, and finally vacuumed dry. So, it worked, but there was no hot water. It was quite cold.
Shower examines the dying days of a grand old bathhouse in Beijing.
Set in a grand, wheezy old building in an overlooked corner of the ageless city, the bathhouse serves as the social hub of an elderly fraternity, and contrary to what the lady's bottom in Shower 's advertisement promises, the film is populated almost exclusively by melancholic old men who predictably complain about youth and argue among themselves. Though not a particularly insightful or even original film, Shower is nonetheless satisfying. Moreover, the attention to detail, particularly in the depiction of Master Liu's transcendent relationship with his retarded son, is rich and rewarding. There is one sequence in particular that achieves a gentle grace, in which Master Liu runs round the block with Er Ming, the two of them bouncing slowly down the street in their garish sweatsuits. Rounding the corner, they slip through a park, and cross a little plaza filled with elderly people exercising in the thin light of early evening.