A young Chinese wife reunites with her husband after a four-year separation.


A SEPARATION is used with permission from Yalan Hu. Learn more at https://yalanhufilms.com.


On a warm autumn day in 1990, Huixian, a young Chinese woman, arrives in Florida. She's reuniting with her husband, who has been pursuing his Ph.D. at a university for the past four years on his own.

Huixian is excited to rejoin her husband and start their family in the U.S., and she has missed her husband dearly. But her transition to American life isn't easy, as she struggles to adapt to a new country and the person her husband has become during their separation.

Directed and written by Yalan Hu, this quietly sensitive short drama is both a portrait of a young, impossibly hopeful wife who finds herself in a new culture and a portrayal of a marriage tentatively testing the strength and durability of its bonds after a significant separation. It opens with a scene of an older Huixian, spotting a young Chinese woman waiting to be picked up at an airport. The sight sparks memories of Huixian's own arrival at the same airport years before and the awkward reunion with her husband that followed.

True to its nostalgic framing, the storytelling is intimate, tender and often elegantly spare in tenor, but the elements that it does lean upon -- evocative dialogue, small yet telling details, muted visuals -- resonate with an unusual thoughtfulness. The sparseness allows character to come to the fore, especially Huixian's. She is curious, observant and eager for her husband's love and company. Her husband, however, is more reserved. He is distant, preoccupied with his work, and evasive about the specifics of the life that he's built up in the U.S. during his wife's absence.

Huixian teases her husband about how American he's become, but the changes she senses are more than cultural. They become clear when she attends a party for the department her husband works and studies within, where she confronts the community and relationships her husband has built up during their separation. He also makes little effort to welcome her into his world. Though the reason why is not surprising, it nevertheless achieves a devastating impact on Huixian, played by actor Michelle Sun in a luminous performance, where aching hopefulness and naivete give way to deep sorrow and quiet devastation.

It's a testament to the film's innate empathy and compassion that the perspectives of both husband and wife are understandable in the end, and the narrative is uninterested in assigning blame. Instead, it gently interrogates and illuminates a complex intertwining: the hopes of immigration, the pursuit of happiness and the fragility of love. Its tone is melancholic, even elegiac, as if mourning the lost possibilities of a marriage that never had a chance to grow. But like the intrepid, resilient woman at its center, A SEPARATION is ultimately hopeful, as Huixian confronts the loss of one dream, which propels her to find her own version of happiness for herself.