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China, Hong Kong, France · 2002
Rated PG · 1h 56m
Director Tian Zhuangzhuang
Starring Jingfan Hu, Wu Jun, Xiao Keng Ye, Si Si Lu
Genre Drama, Romance
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In a mansion decimated during World War II, a frustrated, bored housewife, Yuwen, is torn between caring for her ailing husband and her longing for a former sweetheart, a doctor who has come to treat her husband.
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Should please art house buffs across the board. Connoisseurs of Chinese film will be pleased to discover that Tian's meticulous talent has not withered during his enforced hiatus. Moviegoers who like their visions of China rarefied and past tense will delight in the careful period setting.
Exquisitely made love story.
Tian's movie seems to be among the finest expressions of the Chinese new wave.
A beautiful, slow-motion melodrama.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
There's a painterly translucence to this ''Springtime,'' and a mystery, too; each frame is as delicately poised and lit as a Vermeer portrait of a woman, beckoning but unknowable.
Los Angeles Times by Manohla Dargis
For Tian, who was banned from directing by Chinese authorities for a decade, it marks a triumphant return; for those who have loved the filmmaker's work in the past, few resurrections have seemed as welcome.
Simply put, it represents the work of a filmmaker so exhilaratingly in command of his craft that he can, among other things, turn a single image of two people standing next to each other -- fully clothed, their bodies not quite touching -- into one of the most sublimely erotic moments we have ever beheld on the screen.
Has the suffocating intensity of great chamber drama.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
As Mark Li Ping-bing's beautiful cinematography observes the change of season, the movie becomes a broader meditation on rebirth, and how, in the language of T. S. Eliot, April, the month that stirs such hopes for the future, is also "the cruellest month" for awakening such keen desire.
Can be summed up in one word: style.
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