Xiao cheng zhi chun

The cinematography is the definite star of this film. Although the surrounding countryside is a bit stark (after all, WWII was to have just ended), the camera work was extremely beautiful. Slowly sweeping and creeping cameras really gave the movie an unusual feel and greatly enhanced the film.

The story itself is interesting, though the plot seems a little too slowly paced. I think about ten minutes could have been shaved off here and there and by tightening the film, it might have had a slightly better impact. However, the story itself is interesting and is an odd but excellent love story.

The Chinese film Springtime in a Small Town is a stately, unwaveringly discreet movie, but one with more quiet resonance than many of its Western equivalents. It reminds us superficially of the films of Merchant-Ivory - it possesses the sense of tactful distance, the quality of not wanting to deal with any unseemly emotions, that characterizes such staid, painterly efforts as Howards End, A Room With a View and that classic of repressed-librarian-cinema, The Remains of the Day - but director Zhuangzhuang Tian has a greater talent for letting emotion slip in the backdoor than James Ivory, who is often lauded for his subtlety, but is not criticized enough for being a prudish old grandma. Zhuangzhuang's film involves a quartet of characters engaged in a slow, elegant emotional dance. The story takes place in the aftermath of WWII, when China is just starting to pick up the pieces after the devastation wrought on it by the Japanese. Sickly Dai Liyan (Jun Wu) lives with his dutiful-but-frustrated wife Yuwen (Jingfan Hu) and bubbly young sister Xiu (Si Si Lu) in a large, dilapidated house; Liyan's old friend Zhang Zhichen (Bai Qing Xin), a doctor and ex-resistance-fighter from Shanghai, drops in for a visit, much to the delight of everyone in the dreary household. Zhichen, it turns out, was also childhood friends with Yuwen and Xiu; we quickly realize that Zhichen and Yuwen still have feelings for each other, and learn that they had designs on marriage before the war whisked Zhichen away. The personalities of the characters are all carefully delineated, and fit with each other like pieces of a puzzle; Zhuangzhuang puts the picture together slowly, eschewing big dramatic revelations for moments where the relationships take subtle shifts. Such an exercise in formality, peopled by characters who are not exactly big on coming out with anything (except little Xiu, who has still not learned what it means to be a lady), will inevitably wear on the patience at times, but Zhuangzhuang has a way of injecting enough subdued poetry into his images that we don't mind the time it takes for the pieces to snap into place. It's not the kind of movie that reaches for big emotional effects, but neither is it the type that seems to shy away from emotion altogether. Movies like the Merchant-Ivory works are fastidious, grammatically impeccable and fairly heartless, while Springtime in a Small Town, for all its restraint, manages to resonate in the end. The difference between James Ivory and Zhuangzhuang Tian is obvious - Ivory keeps his distance for fear of emotion, while Zhuangzhuang keeps his out of simple politeness.

Spoilers

An alternative title of this film could have been the one for a recent local play in town: 'Tiny ripples in still waters' (as literally translated. 'Still waters' obviously have nothing to do with the fictitious rock band featured in 'Almost Famous'. It just means a dead pool).

This film reminds me immediately of the Italian gem Facing Windows I saw recently in Toronto, for which my comments started out thus: 'The ripple-in-a-mundane-life type of story is difficult to handle'. Both films deal with a stagnant marriage, and the ripple created by the intrusion of a man. The circumstances are however different, but I am not going to start comparing and contrasting the two. For Springtime, the main cause of the marital problem is the husband's (Liyan) lingering ailment. His home-coming childhood friend (Zeichen) turns out to be also the wife's (Yuwen) teen sweetheart. The only two other characters are Liyan's little sister, just turning 16, and a faithful old manservant.

The pace is slow but the film is absorbingly mesmerising. Behind the deceptively simple dialogue is an undercurrent of ebbs and flows of emotions, particularly in the case of Hu Jingfan playing Yuwen. (Look beyond the surface of the words she speaks into the subtly varying tone, the nuances, and the ever so slight shift in the timbre of her voice). Masterly use of a slowly panning camera creates the melancholy mood sustaining the intriguing lure of the film.

Particularly worth mentioning is the brilliant climax of the 'drinking' scene. I won't spoil it with inapt descriptions. If Hu Jingfu's performance has been subtle hitherto, it's sparkling in that scene.

Film critics in town who have seen the original 1948 version claim that it is even better. Hope to get a chance to see it. In any event, this re-make is well worth recommending to those who have the capacity to appreciate.

* * * *

Update - March 2005.

Have now seen the original, which certainly lives up to its reputation, but can't agree with the verdict that the remake is inferior.

The movie concerns a tragic emotional triangle between Zhang Zhichen, a successful doctor, who, on returning from Shanghai finds that his long lost sweetheart Yuwen, has married his best friend in his absence. That his best friend, Dai Liyan is a bit of a passionless, malingering whinger (whom, we are given to understand, is somewhat lacking in the trouser department) is, I think, supposed to tip our guilty sympathies toward the unrequited pair. However, there is no lingering eye contact, no haltingly emotional dialogue, no inadvertent contact, in fact no telegraphing of emotion of any kind between the friend and the wife. Yumen recites her lines as if they were a shopping list, and Zhang Zhichen seems to be reading his off the back off his eyelids. This peculiar lack of chemistry between the erstwhile lovers means that for me at least, this movie never gets off the ground. This is a real shame, as it is almost impossible to find fault with the LOOK of this movie. The cinematography is absolutely spot on, establishing shots are just where they need to be, POVs are perfect, the lighting reveals where it should and creates pools of shadow for the actors to move in and out of. Slow pans through densely textured interiors, alternately obscuring and disclosing, give an almost vertiginous sense of solidity and depth to the stage upon which the actors perform. That the actors don't seem to know how to convey the intensity and recklessness of true love upon that stage is the real tragedy of this movie. Two stars for acting, four for set design and cinematography

This a love story of sorts set in the 1940's in post-war China. It is a love triangle or a love quadrangle, depending if you include the 16-year-old young lady who was yet to know love at her age, or was about to.

The story is fairly typical: a loveless marriage, probably sexless due to the husband's ill health, but a marriage nevertheless with the wife doing her best to look after her ailing husband. Then an old lover showed up to create turmoil in their otherwise peaceful, though probably unhappy, lives.

I find the acting a bit green at places. The pace was slow. But the setting, both indoor and outdoor, was visually beautiful and the story, told in an unhurried fashioned, engaging. There are no bad guys here. And yet grief and unhappiness prevailed simply because things just happened that way. And changes were simply out of the question because they lived in an era where people were bound by certain moral obligations.

This film demands patience, but is one that engages. Director Tian has told a common love story well.