This movie left me speechless. It is, for me, definitely on the same level as other classics like "So-Won" and "Miracle in Cell No. 7" and what it has in common with those movies is that it also explores human relationships, especially those between sons/daughters and their respective parents. The story is pretty much simple.. or at least, it seems so. A couple getting through a divorce has to deal with the disappearance of their only son. They try to find him and in the process, heal, as well. What I really liked about this movie, putting aside the amazing performances, is the way it portrays the story and it portrays it in a such way that we look at it from various perspectives. Of course, we sympathize with the birth parents and the pain they're feeling but we also cannot help but sympathize with the mother who has now, like them, lost their children. We also feel sad for this kid because it is sad enough to be taken away from your family one time but, two times, that's enough. The scene where Li runs after the parents while they try to take her son away or the scene where she is shoved away by different people when she tries to hug her son are very difficult to watch and we cannot wonder if they're doing to her what it was done also to them. Her involvement in the kidnapping of her son is not truly explained: did she know or was she just lying? We don't know and she's in a complex situation but we can't help but still sympathize with her, especially at the very last scene when it is revealed that she was also a victim, that she could in fact reproduce and was lied to by her husband. The director did a great job by switching the perspectives on the second half of the movie and the movie does not ever lose its focus, on the contrary, it makes it even more compelling. Every one of the actors is great, the way they portray their pain on screen is so real that sometimes it's like we also feel their pain but I can't help but feel completely amazed by Zhao Wei's performance. She completely blew me away. At the end, when there's pictures and videos of the original parents in which the movie was based on, we realize we're not just watching a movie, we're watching something real; we're watching the real state of China where child kidnapping is a current. This movie was a wonderful experience, one that definitely marked me and I won't ever forget it.

This film follows the story of two divorced parents searching for their abducted child. One of the most interesting aspects of this film to me was the fact that there was very little character development throughout the story. The film focused a lot more on the actual plot and extreme minutia than the characters themselves. All we really know about the father of the abducted child, PengPeng, was the fact that he worked at an internet cafe. The mother? she worked in some nice building. The wife of the abductor was a farmer who became very attached to the children. We don't even meet the abductor in the film because he supposedly died. The plot line however, gets pretty complex and deep. The foster mother of PengPeng and another girl is a farmer who thinks she is infertile, because her husband told her that she was as an excuse to go sleep with other women. PengPeng's parents find him and take him back. PengPeng, his birth parents, the farmer, and the other girl are in the police station when the decision is made to give PengPeng back to his real parents. They put the girl in an orphanage and the farmer woman is determined to get her back. She manages to find a lawyer and fights PengPeng's birth mother over custody. The end of the movie is very interesting and leaves many questions unanswered. The court decision hasn't been made because PengPeng's mother is mid divorce and the farmer is believed to not be legally able to adopt a child based on income, etc. We also find out that the farmer ends up getting pregnant after sleeping with a construction worker, proving that she was indeed fertile all along and that her husband lied to her. In general, the plot was pretty confusing and hard to follow. Also, the fact that the movie was 2h15m long didn't necessarily help

Dearest was a great, but depressing film which kept the viewer intrigued on what was going to happen throughout. The two main characters, the husband and wife, were constantly fighting while they had their son, but once he was kidnapped, they had to get along again in order to find him. This movie did a great job of sending the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster. A really touching and awkward scene was when they were in the missing child support group, and the wife mentioned that she saw Peng Peng running behind her car. I really sympathized for her in that moment, because I do not know the amount of guilt I would feel if I could have stopped my son from being kidnapped. Another aspect of this movie that I enjoyed was getting to know the abductor's wife. At first I hated her because she was part of the family that took Peng Peng, but as the movie progresses, you begin to realize that she is fairly innocent, and her husband was the only real bad guy in this situation. This movie left the viewer on a cliff for many of the topics which I wish were closed. The main topics that I wanted to see closed were whether the girl in the orphanage was adopted, if the main characters got remarried, and what happened to the abductor's wife's baby. Overall, I enjoyed this movie and it kept me engaged throughout.

Dearest's trailer is sensational, showing all kinds of crying faces and I was not looking forward to see it. But I like Peter Chan, Wei Zhao and Bo Huang. So I went anyway. Well, I cannot say I like it but I think it is worth watching as it shows how disorganized and terrible China is as a country. And I think the director has presented all the facts in quite an objective way.Based on true events, Dearest tells the heartbreaking story of a divorced couple losing their three-year old son in the coastal city of Shenzhen and the ordeal of searching for him. Yet it is not simply a child abduction story, through the story of Tian Wenjun (Bo Huang) and Li Hongqin (Zhao Wei), we realize that child abduction is widespread in China, as with woman kidnap, and the heartless scam of people tricking parents of the kidnapped kids, and the ridiculous policy of allowing parents to have a second child only after proving their first child is dead. What the movie did not show is what the abductors do to the children – be it training them to be thieves, or sedating them to be beggars, or child labors, or child prostitute, or selling them overseas or to parents who cannot have kids … More depressing truths.But what it shows is already thought-provoking and disheartening. I cried quite a number of times. For a child, it is sad enough being taken away from your family. But what is sadder is being taken away from another family again and could not recognize your birth parents. Wei Zhao is brilliant in portraying a desperate, innocent but determent mother from a remote village who descends to the southern city of Shenzhen to look for her son. Her motive is pure and noble but the complex situation, including her husband's lies has put her in some pathetic situation. It is appalling that this is based on a true stories as at the end credits, we see pictures of the original parents, the farmer, the abducted child and the support group of parents losing their children. Very impressive but sad because these abductions are still happening every single day. Another thought is, with such vast geography and disparity of wealth, the quality of the people are incredibly low. So low that they often resort to physical violence to solve problems – even outside the courthouse! We heard about these abductions in the news and on the net but this is the first time I encountered these on the big screen. Looking around us, so what if you have your kid in safety in China, you need to shop around for reliable formula milk powder that is safe. That explains why Chinese are snatching up formula milk from supermarkets all over the world from Japan to Germany, let alone Hong Kong. Life must be very tough if you were born and being raised in China. There is no system, or if/when there is, it is inhuman and unreasonable, not to mention the widespread corruption that hinders justice. Under this kind of system, it seems it would be hard to nourish caring, rational and reasonable human beings who looks beyond money and short term profit. The ripped off paralegal Gao Xia (Dawei Tung) sums it up well though awkwardly in the movie: if people would consider others' point of view this country would have been so much better. They have just forgot/ignored Confucius' Golden Rule. How ironic. A great glimpse into the terrible life in China.