Springtime in a Small Town
With Hu Jingfan, Wu Jun, Xin Baiqing, Ye Xiaokeng, and Lu Sisi.
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A highly charged erotic chamber drama about unfulfilled adulterous passion, Spring in a Small City–made just a year before the communist victory in mainland China–is set in 1946, shortly after the retreat of the defeated Japanese. The film takes place in and around the ruins of a mansion in southern China. It’s part of a small town that we don’t see much of but can intuit from the heroine’s references to her daily shopping and the school her teenage sister-in-law attends.
Much of what follows proceeds by indirection and nuance, as Zhichen and Yuwen negotiate stirrings of their former passion. (Fei Mu–also known for the silent films he directed in Shanghai and depicted as an important character in Stanley Kwan’s 1991 masterpiece Actress–reportedly solicited the exquisite performances from his leads by instructing them with the Chinese saying “Begin with emotion, end with restraint!”) On the eve of Xiu’s 16th birthday Liyan suggests that the doctor would make a perfect husband for her once she gets older, and after everyone gets drunk at the birthday celebration many conflicting feelings rise to the surface, culminating in Liyan’s overdosing on sleeping pills.
That Tian can finally work again is a blessing. For Chinese viewers I imagine Springtime in a Small Town represents both a formidable cinematic challenge and a way of resituating the present in relation to the past. Tian himself, interviewed in the hour-long documentary The Making of “Springtime in a Small Town” that’s included on the English DVD of the film, says that “It was as if Fei Mu was teaching me how to make movies–the proper attitude towards movies, and how to understand and present the characters in movies.” For practically everyone else it’s a new story that can fully stand on its own.
