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After showering in a hypermodern hygiene machine of his own design, Chinese yuppie Da Ming (Pu Cunxin) reluctantly treks down to Beijing, after hearing that his father (Zhu Xu) is dead. Turns out that dad, an old-school bathhouse owner, is fine; it's progress--blatantly symbolized by his son's shower machine--that's the problem. Well, there's also Er Ming (Jiang Wu), Da Ming's retarded brother, who's taken to seeing how long he can keep his head underwater as the bathhouse's date with a government wrecking ball grows nearer. Obviously, director Zhang Yang cares little that he's trotting out every out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new trope in the book, but the Chinese auteur's old-fashioned pluck pays off. With its schematic plot, simple (but not cardboard) characters, and elegiac (but not slow) pacing, Shower comes off as a wistful, funny meditation about accepting the inevitable and finding beauty in the promise of what follows.