Lin Jianjie’s Brief History of a Family starts off promising, as a wealthy Chinese family takes in a mysterious boy, Yan Shuo, to live with them. Tensions arise as the clan works to integrate this new child in the wake of China’s ‘one child’ policy. With stark framing, cold cinematography, and a surprisingly EDM-infused score, one gets the sense that this movie has Something On Its Mind.  Unfortunately, 99 minutes later, this hollow film has proven that it in fact has nothing to say.  Various plot threads are gestured at but never fully explored.  For instance there’s an uncomfortable Oedipal intimacy to the early scenes between Yan Shuo and the mother which are completely absent from the rest of the film.  (Which is more maddening when you consider that the best character work in the film is from the parents, played by Zu Feng and Guo Keyu—whenever they’re on screen, the movie sputters to life.) Most disappointingly of all, the script pays only lip service to the ‘one child’ policy and fails to explore it in any satisfying fashion.  Instead the movie settles for ambience and mood, with plenty of slo-mo scenes of characters walking, set to house music, and even an obvious recreation of the Pieta in one shot. This all culminates in a final sequence that’s frustratingly vague and abstract, which comes off not as the work of an auteur, but as the amateurish machinations of a director who doesn’t have an ending.