AllMovie

In this heartwarming tale of an older man's strength in combatting loneliness, director Li Yu-ning has created a compassionate and sympathetic story, though one that may still raise the shackles of feminists (and not without reason). Old Muo (Sun Yueh) has been discharged from military service only to find that his wife and son have died in Mainland China, and his foster son is away in America, married, and of no mind to return home to see his foster father. Muo is unbearably lonely and depressed, with no friends, except one, to alleviate his sadness. That one friend, in fact, has just arranged a marriage for himself by simply buying a teenage woman belonging to an ethnic minority, and the two seem to be happy together. Following the lead of his friend, Muo soon does the same thing but finds that adjustments to living with a stranger, and a much younger stranger at that, are more demanding that he could have imagined. Eventually, some of the bigger problems get resolved and the originally ill-at-ease couple start to settle into a more companionable existence. When Muo's young wife gets pregnant, their love of family and children finds a mutual expression, suggesting that Muo's "second spring" may yet blossom.