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photo courtesy of Visions du Réel 2009

Nyon film festival 2009

by Jillian Hudson

Wang Hao’s “Pediatrics Department” raises many interesting questions abut Chinese public hospitals and the medical system as a whole. Throughout the two hours that Hao allows us look into the professional lives of the doctors and nurses of the pediatric unit the audience has a chance to relate to the characters and sympathize with their troubles.

Unfortunately the film is an overly long tirade of the characters’ struggles with unfair salary practices and their disillusion with the system. The majority of the scenes are staff meetings and angry phone calls between the director of the department and management. The recurring themes were the parents’  inability or unwillingness to pay for their children’s treatment and the hospital’s inability or unwillingness to pay for their staff’s services.

Overall the film is a successful social portrait, with an honest view of the struggles of health care providers. However, the passion that can draw viewers into a world very foreign from their own is lacking in “Pediatrics Department.” The subject could easily have been conveyed in half the time it took to reach the end of what felt like a very long staff meeting that neither the doctors nor the audience wanted to be stuck in.

see Visions du réel

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