Definitely not for the Multiplex crowd this is a slow-burner with Chekhovian undertones, gorgeous photography and lots of understated acting. It's a simple enough premise: we're in the immediate post-war period in a quiet Chinese backwater where a man who looks several years older than the mid-thirties to which he admits, possibly because of a medical condition, lives in sexless tranquility with his wife and sister. This can't go on of course otherwise we're talking Walden in Mandarin so enter the man's old friend down from Shanghai for an unspecified period, add in the fact that the friend and the wife were once an item, stir gently and allow to simmer. That's just about it but as I keep on saying it's all in the wrist.
Review of Springtime in a Small Town
