And The Spring Comes

[Chinese] The second film from Chinese director Gu Changwei, who won the Berlin film festival's Grand Jury Prize for his film Peacock, is Li Chun (And the Spring Comes) Set in a backwater province of China in the 80s, Spring tells the story of Wang Cai-Ling, (Jiang Wenli) an unattractive single woman consigned to the fringes of society for her looks and her passion for Western Opera. Longing to escape the frustrations of her life she travels to Beijing in search of work, but time and time again is turned away and forced back to her provincial life. This is a complex film that undermines the Western cultural value assigned to notions of art and talent. Set in post-Cultural Revolution China, the film juxtaposes the hopes and dreams of “artists” against a society bound by rigid social codes and the harsh day-to-day reality of a life lived destitute of love and hope. Like the characters from Chekhov's Three Sisters which Cai-Ling compares herself to, the film is infused with a constant longing for the vibrancy of the city and a spring of new beginnings that never comes. Any attempt at action dissipates into bathos and bitter humor and every human relationship seems only to highlight the inadequacies of our ability to communicate. Yet Changwei attaches no romanticism to the role of the solitary artist. “This is your life and you must learn how to bear it,” Cai-Ling tells Jiao Gang (Hu Jinquan) a homosexual dance teacher who, like her, is outcast from society, ridiculed for his ambition and deviation from social norms. Changwei creates a sparse aesthetic reminiscent of his earlier works and his fellows from the Beijing Film Academy. Theatrical costumes and makeup bring the only flashes of color to an otherwise grey and toneless world.

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