Springtime in a Small Town

I usually don't dig Chinese movies. As far as asian cinema is concerned, I am more a Japanese or Korean fan. But this Springtime is bliss. Just about everything is beautiful, from script to cinematography to acting (with the notable exception of the girl who plays the young sister, whom I thought was over-acting).

One thing I thought was interesting is the way director Tian expressed his intention of editing from the original version of the movie (shot in the '50s) all the elements that would not appeal to a viewer today. Therefore, we must assume that pre-arranged weddings are still a common fact in today's China. What about love ?

Well, enough for the pseudo-sociological analysis. On a more pleasure-oriented level, this is a jewel. Not a perfect movie, granted, I couldn't rate it more than the 8 I gave it, but such a nice little piece of work. Colors, sounds, camera movements, actor's play, everything is fluid, warm, inhabited. A very nice springtime in a small town indeed...

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.

Set in the days immediately following World War II, the Chinese film "Springtime in a Small Town" is a poetic, slow-moving meditation on the part that love, passion, compromise, self-sacrifice and renewal play in our lives and our relationships.

Liyan and Yuwen are a young married couple living in the crumbling ancestral home of the man's deceased parents. Struggling under the burden of an arranged marriage, Liyan and Yuwen have been drifting farther and farther apart over time - he obsessing over his chronic health problems (possibly psychosomatic in nature) and she secretly yearning for a more fulfilling life away from this man who seems not to care for her. Then one day, Zhang, an old boyhood pal of Liyan's, comes to pay a visit. Now a doctor, Zhang is shocked to discover that Liyan's wife is Yuwen, the very woman whom he loved but left ten years earlier. Tensions very quickly develop in the household as Zhang and Yuwen begin to take steps towards rekindling their romance - forcing each of the three individuals to come to terms with long unresolved desires and emotions.

In its quiet, subtle way, "Springtime in a Small Town" explores what happens when human emotions and passions are repressed under the weight of societal restrictions and cultural traditions. Writer Cheng Ah and director Zhuangzhuang Tian unfold their story slowly, never feeling the need to rev up the action or overemphasize a detail to make a point. The film establishes a hypnotic rhythm and a tone of quiet contemplation from the outset, allowing us to soak in all that is happening on the screen at our own leisure. For despite the fact that there may not SEEM to be a lot happening in the film, there is actually a wealth of human drama taking place right beneath the placid surface of the tale. These are characters whose every word, every gesture reveals some aspect of the universal human condition. To heighten the intimacy of the piece, Ah and Tian have circumscribed their canvas so that only five people even make an appearance in the film (Liyan's teenaged sister and an aged family servant are the movie's other two characters). "Canvas" is indeed the operative word here, for Tian has treated this film much like he would a painting, capturing his characters in stark tableau often set against strikingly beautiful natural landscapes. The camera glides along at an unhurried pace, helping to draw us into this strangely beautiful world where seething human passions play themselves out in settings. The filmmakers also deserve credit for providing a remarkably ambiguous ending. We really aren't quite sure how we are supposed to react at the end of the movie and that is as it should be when it comes to art.

The lovely Jingfan Hu is both heartbreaking and not a little frightening as the normally composed young woman who may not be quite as sweet and submissive as she appears to be on the surface. The shots of her strolling through the countryside in all her placid, regal beauty are haunting and memorable in their exquisiteness. Jun Wu as Liyan and Bai Qing Xin as Zhang also give excellent performances, never allowing their strong feelings to rise much above the level of a whisper. Liyan is a particularly fascinating character in that we get the sense that he may be using his "illness" as a means of avoiding the responsibilities and pressures of being a true husband to his wife. The power struggle that develops among the three of them is devastating in its understatement and subtlety.

There's no denying that "Springtime in a Small Town" demands a certain amount of patience from the viewer. But anyone who opens himself up to the beauty of its images and the truth of its observations will find it to be a profoundly rewarding experience well worth the time and patience.

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.

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.