Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun

Tian Zhuangzhuang’s remake of Fei Mu’s 1948 legendary Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun or ‘Spring in a Small Town’ (considered by more than one film critics’ associations to be the greatest Chinese film ever made) tells a small and quiet story of a romantic triangle in the temporal space between the end of the Sino-Japanese War and the creation of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Tian Zhuangzhuang is one of China’s most revered filmmakers and he made this film after a 10 year hiatus imposed after the release of his acclaimed and politically charged story of coming of age during the Mao period, Lan Feng Zheng, The Blue Kite (1993). ‘Springtime in a Small Town’ is his quietest film and it presented him with particular challenges because of the status of Fei Mu’s version that stood as a monument to the art of cinema in the minds of those who had been fortunate enough to see it. Fei Mu’s film portrayed China as exhausted by war and as a place where an endless cycle of promised reforms simply produced greater exploitation. As a political allegory it showed the wish for deliverance dashed and the fire of ambition turned into bitter reflection. Not surprisingly the censors, suspicious of the lack of both a romanticised view of ordinary life and the usual evil of the property-owning class, withdrew it from distribution shortly after its original release. The early screenings became lore and a new pressing made in Hong Kong in the 1980’s brought renewed calls for its re-release. The success of Tian’s film helped to bring Fei’s original back to the screen. The result is two great films, each of which wind their respective director’s talents around the scaffolding of the same story.

That story is a melancholy one, at the centre of which is a couple whose marriage is rotting away through disinterest. The loveless provincial squire, Liyan (Wu Jun), is peevish and, he suspects, tubercular (in Tian’s film this diagnosis is denied), nursing his moodiness in the walled-garden compound of his family estate. His wife of 8 years, Yuwen (Hu Jingfan) is unhappy but self-possessed, living in her own quarters devoid of hope of children. They share the house with a loyal family retainer and Liyan’s much younger sister Da Xiu (Lu Sisi), a spirited and giggly teenager who seems much younger than her 16 years. When an old friend of Liyan’s, Doctor Zhang Zhichen (Xin Baiqing) pays a visit from Shanghai, distrust enters the equation. Liyan learns of a coincidence that is both heartening and invasive; Zhang was his wife’s first love and holds a special place in her memory. Zhang is everything her husband is not. He is vital, successful, self-confident and sensual against Yuwen’s dry and desiccated emotional existence. The viewpoint of the film is hers as emotions change within an austere physical environment strewn with debris from the devastation of war. This is not a film that takes a love triangle and explodes it with erotic fireworks; rather it is a seething domestic drama that becomes a meditation on China and rebirth.

Tian uses a mobile camera to create a poignant chamber drama and gets nuanced performances from his cast of newcomers. Cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing (responsible for several Hou Hsiao-hsien movies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and, in part, In the Mood for Love) makes the film shimmer, capturing beautifully the changes in season. Almost every scene is presaged by a precisely designed scenic shot that makes us aware of the smallness of human life against the vastness of the landscape. Like his other films, ‘Springtime’ has an astonishingly quiet force, and shows a self-confident ease of craft that allows him to make a scene involving two fully dressed adults standing outdoors sublimely erotic. One critic observed ‘The result is a movie that drifts across the screen with the delicacy of linen floating on a warm breeze, whose slow, sensual camera movements are like tiptoes on rice paper, yet which can sting us with the suddenness of a bee concealed in clover.’ Whilst not at the outset as political a film as The Blue Kite, by the end of the film the devastation of war and remembrance demonstrates its’ human cost.

Tian Zhuangzhuang is reported as saying, "Making this film felt like communicating with a master. I never stopped learning from Fei Mu. That's what made it possible to restart my career as a director."