“Springtime in a Small Town” blooms onto the screen with the intensity and mystery of a first love never quite realized; the deep and searching story of a love triangle that is and isn’t. Jingfan Hue plays Yuwen, a loyal wife and lover watching her husband Dai Liyan (Jun Wu) waste away of a mysterious illness that lacks symptoms save for a deep depression and a crushing feeling that his world is coming to an end. When Yuwen’s former lover and Dai Liyan’s college chum Zhang Zhichen (Bai Qing Xin) returns from the war and years of absence to visit his childhood friends, old emotions come back to haunt the trio and they look into themselves to find peace amidst a torrent of passion denied.
The movie opens with Zhang walking down the decrepit street of war-ravaged pock-marked plaster walls to find the old family home of Dai. He knocks on the door once, twice, and waits with apprehension as no one answers. Then he walks around the doorway and over the broken-in wall to enter the house in an understated, Buddhist take on the western gag of walking around the locked door when there is no wall. Entering the house through the back-door as it were; creeping in, afraid of what the family has in store.
As in Ki-duk Kim’s great film, “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring” (2003), the method of entering the house is critical. The monastery in “Spring, Summer” was nothing more than a hut surrounded by a lake, but it had an entrance arch at the shore. The message was clear, visitors either entered into the spirit of the monastery by entering through the gate, or they entered outside the gate in the ways of the world.
As Zhang enters through the wall he comes upon the back of his host and school chum Dai. Dai turns to meet him in dazed surprise and then recognizes his friend. As they embrace and take their measures, the audience sees each through the eyes of the other. Dai, in a robe and wasting away, his self-dignity taken by the war and his dying love affair with his beautiful but unfulfilled Yuwen; and Zhang, the self-actualized doctor returning to the old town to claim what is rightfully his--the love of Yuwen, denied by the war and his dedication to his practice.
Dai has lost his will to impress his love on his wife, and Yuwen’s love blows in the wind like her scarf caught in the branches of the dying, leafless tree outside the town. Zhang captures her scarf from the tree and climbs a rocky crag to meet her, but he cannot express his desire without staining Yuwen’s honor. A most amazing scene of intoxication, followed by an overdose of lethal medication change the lives of the threesome forever.
In the middle of this threesome is thrust Dai’s teenage sister, Xiu (Si Si Lu), playing the part of the audience within the tightly guarded vault of emotions that is the impassioned threesome. She asks the questions the audience cannot, she expresses the emotions and the pain of the audience as the hopelessness of the love affair plays out in the war-torn citadel of flowers. Flowers that are meant to exist only in the rarified atmosphere of hope when there is none. will that hope survive Zhang’s fateful visit?
“Springtime in a Small Town” is a remake of the 1948 pre-Mao romantic classic by director Fei Mu in 1948. Fei pioneered heretofore verboten emotions in cinema and was given short shrift by the official curators of art in post-war China. He died three years after making what was to become one of the most acclaimed films of the nation and his work languished for three decades. When the relaxing ligaments of the cultural revolution allowed a breath of freedom to enter Chinese cinema in the 1980s, the original negative of “Springtime” was released into a new light of day and was eventually revered as one of the few best films ever made in China.
Because of the elegance and depth of the original piece, Chinese director Tian Zhuangzhuang thought long and hard about remaking the work. One of the leading figures of the so-called "Fifth Generation," of Chinese film artists, Tian was blacklisted two years after his “The Blue Kite” won the Grand Prix at the 1992 Tokyo International Film Festival. The film was critical of the Cultural Revolution and Tian paid the price for speaking out. A decade would pass before he was ready to direct his next work. Not widely circulated in America, “Springtime” will be released on DVD November 23rd, 2004 from Palm Pictures and is not to be missed. Not only does the DVD have the entire, stunning masterpiece of the film, but is has extensive interviews with the director and cast as well. These interviews provide priceless insight into the careful making and re-making of the shooting and detailed advice from the director himself on conducting the filmed portrayal of everything from passion to betrayal, from discipline to drunkenness.
Tian cautions his players not to overact. He never wants the action on the screen to over-shadow the expressions and words of the actors. This makes for a slow film for western audiences, but the patience pays off in the end. The product of his care and respect for the film medium is a classic love story that should be watched and re-watched by every student of the film medium and every person who harbors, for better or for worse, memories of love.
Further details in the database , this one is already out and ordering details in the Amazon links below.
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