LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

aliasanythingyouwant 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.

Roland E. Zwick 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.

alexduffy2000 "Springtime in a Small Town" is beautiful to look at, but not very memorable. It's basically a filmed play taking place in a house, there are a few exterior shots but not many. I was involved for the first 30 minutes, but then I stopped caring, the plot just wasn't interesting enough. Basically, it's a romantic triangle between the homeowner, his wife, and a visiting doctor friend. Because this film is so dependent on dialogue, I was hoping for some heady conversations on China's crumbling situation - the film takes place in 1948 - but it never happens. The film is like a beautiful model on a runway, pretty to look at, but lacking any depth.

Ralph Michael Stein [See IMDb main page for this film for cast names-none are known outside China]"Springtime in a Small Town" is director Zhuangzhuang Tian's re-make of the 1948 film of the same name, an intense and rare example of Chinese film-making from that turbulent time which few have seen.The time is after the Japanese surrendered and before Mao drove Chiang to Formosa. In what was once a munificent villa, saved from utter destruction after a Japanese air raid by a fortuitous cloudburst, the Young Master, Liyan, lives with his wife, Yuwen and his sister, Dai Xiu, a perky teenager on the cusp of womanhood. They are served by a faithful family retainer, Huang.Liyan appears ill with a persistent hacking cough and he alternately consumes and refuses herbal medicines. Into this domestic scene arrives, after a ten-year absence, young doctor Zchichen, a boyhood friend of Liyan and, as it turns out, a fellow who knew Yuwen before her arranged marriage. Quick examination by the novice M.D. reveals what most viewers would have already suspected: Liyan is a pitiful hypochondriac whose self-absorption drove his pretty wife into a separate bedroom long ago.What follows is the growing mutual attraction of Zhichen who harbors long held deep feelings for Yuwen and the woman's awakening awareness that her marriage is a sham: she knows she made a mistake by not leaving with Zhichen a decade earlier.This is a story told largely through dialogue between the three protagonists. A few scenes have them gamboling outside the compound but only one, with a number of teenagers, is actually in the nearly burnt out village. An amusing rowboat outing has the group singing in Chinese to the tune of "The Blue Danube."This being a Chinese romance of sorts, moral values and not simply fear of the censor restrain Yuwen and Zhichen's gnawing passion for each other. They suffer all the pain of deep guilt with none of the offsetting pleasures of carnal consummation.The story, by itself, is neither unique nor totally absorbing. I felt like yelling out to Liyan, "Hey fellow, stop this pretense of being very sick and get your house in order before you no longer have one." But I behaved.There is a political coda to "Springtime in a Small Town" that very many Chinese won't miss and neither will foreign viewers acquainted with modern history. For a start, at the beginning of the film a title-board expresses Tian's regard for the Chinese film-makers of 1948 who produced the original version. That establishes a link with a past that has a a gaping interruption, an important albeit quiet statement by this fine director.In all cultures with sharply varied seasons, spring is always seen as a time of renewal for both man and nature. That point is elegantly portrayed in the current, beautiful Korean film, "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring." Movies, literature and even classical music celebrate spring as a time of hope and regeneration (and it's not for nothing that the hit song in the musical and movie, "The Producers," is "Springtime for Hitler :) ).As "Springtime in a Small Town" ends Liyan and Yuwen tend a garden emerging from winter. However hopeful their outlook, any knowledgeable viewer knows that they will shortly face public accusation, humiliation, self-abnegation, loss of property and - not unlikely - death by a People's firing squad as bourgeois landowners. Their spring will be followed by a deadly political winter and Tian subtly reminds the audience that the next chapter in China's postwar history is one of repression and pain.A common enough love triangle before a deep and depressing chapter of a great people's imminent descent into chaos and even mass madness. This film is a healthy indication that China's film industry is slowly recovering.8/10