The film was very slow and unassuming through the first 1/2hr. The acting was melodramatic. I was getting bored. Watching more, I found that the earlier scenes created the atmosphere so key to the film. In a sense, "April is the cruelest month" is the backdrop that Li Ping and Tian set. The tension between the characters is really elevated above narrative dotage when Li Ping allows a character to wordlessly express turmoil and or the pent-up emotions that they have been suppressing for so long. The earlier melodramatic sequences represent an homage to the most popular Chinesenarratives of the midcentury, when displaying raw emotion was left not to violent screams or gritty dialogue, but to the calculated scenes where characters said very little.
Review of Springtime in a Small Town
