June 17-24, 2004

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GARDEN PARTING: Yuwen (Hu Jingfan) contemplates her loveless marriage.

Tian Zhuangzhuang closes a 10-year gap.

Springtime in a Small Town

by Sam Adams

There's not much springtime in Tian Zhuangzhuang's Springtime in a Small Town, and not much of the small town, either. Set during the immediate aftermath of World War II, Springtime confines itself mainly to the crumbling country estate of Liyan (Wu Jun) and his wife Yuwen (Hu Jingfan), who sometimes goes walking through the town's deserted ruins. Isolated from the world and from each other — husband and wife have long had separate bedrooms — the family's facade cracks when Zhichen (Xin Baiqing) arrives to visit his old friend. Two of them, actually: He's come to see Liyan, and is shocked to discover that, unbeknownst to either of them, his old college buddy has married his childhood sweetheart.

Dressed in tones so earthen he almost blends into the soil, Liyan is wracked by a persistent cough, and has already reconciled himself with death. "My health, like this house, is in disorder," he allows, and it's not just the physical structure he's talking about, though Zhichen does enter by means of a hole in the rear wall.

Tian's camera is always catching the characters through similar holes, whether it's peeking through a screen or dodging tree limbs bent with the first hint of flowers to come. Though the film's speaking cast numbers all of five, including Liyan's sister and a wizened servant, the landscape is frequently reserved a prominent place in the frame, as when Zhichen and Yuwen discuss the possibility of rekindling their relationship while walking along the top of an ancient wall, which suddenly drops away and leaves them facing an abyss.

Remaking the 1948 feature by Fei Mu, who was denounced as a "rightist" after his death and nearly forgotten for three decades, Springtime is prefaced with a dedication to "China's pioneering filmmakers," whose hardships parallel Tian's own. Springtime is his first movie since 1993's The Blue Kite, a fiercely critical history of Maoism told through the eyes of a child. (Kino's DVD renders the film handsomely.) If the post-Tiananmen crackdown has slackened enough to allow Tian a return to active duty, it's hard to say whether Springtime's more oblique allegory is a defense mechanism or merely represents a less outraged perspective. Rather than rebels, Springtime's characters are, eventually, conformists, saddened by their social responsibilities but willing to bear them all the same. Passions surge, but are mastered; when Yuwen bursts into Zhichen's room and throws herself at him, he sweeps her up in his arms, then falters. If The Blue Kite was about the cost of dissent, Springtime tots up the wages of capitulation.

Springtime in a Small Town Directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang A Palm Pictures release Opens Friday at Ritz Five
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