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Movie
Poster for The Marriage Certificate

The Marriage Certificate

2001 · 110 min

A wry, exhausting bureaucratic odyssey that turns a missing paper into a quiet meditation on family and memory.

Directed by
Huang Jianxin
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Family
Starring
Feng Gong, Li Xiaomeng, Lü Liping
Overview
The wife of a prominent psychiatrist can't find her marriage certificate one day. This "jiehunzheng" is all important. Without it, the family officially has never existed, including the daughter. The couple go on a wild goose chase through the Chinese bureaucracy, meeting catch-22 all the way....they need a certificate to get a new one, etc. They even journey back to the People's Commune where they met, now the site of modern private enterprises where nobody even recalls the former occupants.

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In the UKNo streaming, rental or purchase options known.
Directed by
Huang Jianxin
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Family
Starring
Feng Gong, Li Xiaomeng, Lü Liping
In your watch list

How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • satiricalstrength 2 of 3
  • warmstrength 2 of 3
  • melancholicstrength 1 of 3
  • absurdstrength 1 of 3
Pacing
measured, 2 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
engaged, 3 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • family
  • identity
  • memory
  • class
  • justice
Places
  • big city
  • countryside
Era
contemporary
Audience
teen
Form
None
Content intensity
  • Gore none
  • Language mild
  • Violence none
  • Sex mild
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action2
Horror0
Humour7
Realism8
Romance4
Tension5
Darkness4
Complexity6
Emotional weight6

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Where to watch in the UK

No UK streaming, rental or purchase options are known.

Streaming data from JustWatch.TMDB

Details

Genres
comedy, drama, family
Directed by
Huang Jianxin
Starring
Feng Gong, Li Xiaomeng, Lü Liping, Xiangjin Luo, Wang Zhiwen, Jiang Shan, Feng Xiaogang, Fu Biao
Runtime
110 min
Country
China
Languages
Mandarin

TMDBIMDb