[See IMDb main page for this film for cast names-none are known outside China]
"Springtime in a Small Town" is director Zhuangzhuang Tian's re-make of the 1948 film of the same name, an intense and rare example of Chinese film-making from that turbulent time which few have seen.
The time is after the Japanese surrendered and before Mao drove Chiang to Formosa. In what was once a munificent villa, saved from utter destruction after a Japanese air raid by a fortuitous cloudburst, the Young Master, Liyan, lives with his wife, Yuwen and his sister, Dai Xiu, a perky teenager on the cusp of womanhood. They are served by a faithful family retainer, Huang.
Liyan appears ill with a persistent hacking cough and he alternately consumes and refuses herbal medicines. Into this domestic scene arrives, after a ten-year absence, young doctor Zchichen, a boyhood friend of Liyan and, as it turns out, a fellow who knew Yuwen before her arranged marriage. Quick examination by the novice M.D. reveals what most viewers would have already suspected: Liyan is a pitiful hypochondriac whose self-absorption drove his pretty wife into a separate bedroom long ago.
What follows is the growing mutual attraction of Zhichen who harbors long held deep feelings for Yuwen and the woman's awakening awareness that her marriage is a sham: she knows she made a mistake by not leaving with Zhichen a decade earlier.
This is a story told largely through dialogue between the three protagonists. A few scenes have them gamboling outside the compound but only one, with a number of teenagers, is actually in the nearly burnt out village. An amusing rowboat outing has the group singing in Chinese to the tune of "The Blue Danube."
This being a Chinese romance of sorts, moral values and not simply fear of the censor restrain Yuwen and Zhichen's gnawing passion for each other. They suffer all the pain of deep guilt with none of the offsetting pleasures of carnal consummation.
The story, by itself, is neither unique nor totally absorbing. I felt like yelling out to Liyan, "Hey fellow, stop this pretense of being very sick and get your house in order before you no longer have one." But I behaved.
There is a political coda to "Springtime in a Small Town" that very many Chinese won't miss and neither will foreign viewers acquainted with modern history. For a start, at the beginning of the film a title-board expresses Tian's regard for the Chinese film-makers of 1948 who produced the original version. That establishes a link with a past that has a a gaping interruption, an important albeit quiet statement by this fine director.
In all cultures with sharply varied seasons, spring is always seen as a time of renewal for both man and nature. That point is elegantly portrayed in the current, beautiful Korean film, "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring." Movies, literature and even classical music celebrate spring as a time of hope and regeneration (and it's not for nothing that the hit song in the musical and movie, "The Producers," is "Springtime for Hitler :) ).
As "Springtime in a Small Town" ends Liyan and Yuwen tend a garden emerging from winter. However hopeful their outlook, any knowledgeable viewer knows that they will shortly face public accusation, humiliation, self-abnegation, loss of property and - not unlikely - death by a People's firing squad as bourgeois landowners. Their spring will be followed by a deadly political winter and Tian subtly reminds the audience that the next chapter in China's postwar history is one of repression and pain.
A common enough love triangle before a deep and depressing chapter of a great people's imminent descent into chaos and even mass madness. This film is a healthy indication that China's film industry is slowly recovering.
8/10
"Springtime in a Small Town" is director Zhuangzhuang Tian's re-make of the 1948 film of the same name, an intense and rare example of Chinese film-making from that turbulent time which few have seen.
The time is after the Japanese surrendered and before Mao drove Chiang to Formosa. In what was once a munificent villa, saved from utter destruction after a Japanese air raid by a fortuitous cloudburst, the Young Master, Liyan, lives with his wife, Yuwen and his sister, Dai Xiu, a perky teenager on the cusp of womanhood. They are served by a faithful family retainer, Huang.
Liyan appears ill with a persistent hacking cough and he alternately consumes and refuses herbal medicines. Into this domestic scene arrives, after a ten-year absence, young doctor Zchichen, a boyhood friend of Liyan and, as it turns out, a fellow who knew Yuwen before her arranged marriage. Quick examination by the novice M.D. reveals what most viewers would have already suspected: Liyan is a pitiful hypochondriac whose self-absorption drove his pretty wife into a separate bedroom long ago.
What follows is the growing mutual attraction of Zhichen who harbors long held deep feelings for Yuwen and the woman's awakening awareness that her marriage is a sham: she knows she made a mistake by not leaving with Zhichen a decade earlier.
This is a story told largely through dialogue between the three protagonists. A few scenes have them gamboling outside the compound but only one, with a number of teenagers, is actually in the nearly burnt out village. An amusing rowboat outing has the group singing in Chinese to the tune of "The Blue Danube."
This being a Chinese romance of sorts, moral values and not simply fear of the censor restrain Yuwen and Zhichen's gnawing passion for each other. They suffer all the pain of deep guilt with none of the offsetting pleasures of carnal consummation.
The story, by itself, is neither unique nor totally absorbing. I felt like yelling out to Liyan, "Hey fellow, stop this pretense of being very sick and get your house in order before you no longer have one." But I behaved.
There is a political coda to "Springtime in a Small Town" that very many Chinese won't miss and neither will foreign viewers acquainted with modern history. For a start, at the beginning of the film a title-board expresses Tian's regard for the Chinese film-makers of 1948 who produced the original version. That establishes a link with a past that has a a gaping interruption, an important albeit quiet statement by this fine director.
In all cultures with sharply varied seasons, spring is always seen as a time of renewal for both man and nature. That point is elegantly portrayed in the current, beautiful Korean film, "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring." Movies, literature and even classical music celebrate spring as a time of hope and regeneration (and it's not for nothing that the hit song in the musical and movie, "The Producers," is "Springtime for Hitler :) ).
As "Springtime in a Small Town" ends Liyan and Yuwen tend a garden emerging from winter. However hopeful their outlook, any knowledgeable viewer knows that they will shortly face public accusation, humiliation, self-abnegation, loss of property and - not unlikely - death by a People's firing squad as bourgeois landowners. Their spring will be followed by a deadly political winter and Tian subtly reminds the audience that the next chapter in China's postwar history is one of repression and pain.
A common enough love triangle before a deep and depressing chapter of a great people's imminent descent into chaos and even mass madness. This film is a healthy indication that China's film industry is slowly recovering.
8/10
