Springtime in a Small Town

Fei Mu’s 1948 film Spring in a Small Town is widely considered the greatest Chinese film ever made, a dissection of China’s post-war anomie through the story of a sexual triangle: the rivalry between two very different men for the love of one extremely sensual woman. It’s not, on the face of it, a film that cries out to be remade. But when Tian Zhuang took another look at it last year, he found himself intrigued by the sense that the story spoke loud and clear to present-day frustrations and moral dilemmas. Hence this remake – written bij the great novelist Ah Cheng (King of the Children).Yuwen lives in a wardamaged country house with her ailing husband Liyan. The somnolent household comes alive when Liyan’s old friend Zhang Zhichen comes to visit from Shanghai, bringing both medical expertise and a taste of metropolitan style. The problem is that he and Yuwen were once engaged to be married…Tian uses a young cast (fresh out of drama academy) and strengthens the drama by making it explicit that the husband’s impotence is psychomatic. His creative team is matchless: cinematographer Mark Lee (In the Mood for Love and most Hou Hsiao-hsien movies) and Oscar-winning production designer Tim Yip (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). The result is perfectly balanced between respect for Fei Mu’s classic and a desire to push Chinese cinema in new directions. Tony Rayns