Review of Spring in a Small Town

For whatever reason Chinese movies aren't given a whole lot of attention among the film community (at least in the United States). At the very least Chinese movies aren't nearly as talked about as say Japanese movies are. Admittedly I haven't seen that many (in fact I can name only two other mainland Chinese films other than this one. And that's a shame given that Spring in a Small Town is a good movie. It's set (unsurprisingly) in a small town, namely in the compound of the formerly prosperous Dai family. Reminders of World War 2 still loom and the Chinese Civil War remains a threat. The four characters Zhou Yuwen (Wei Wei), her husband Dai Liyan (Yu Shi), his sister Meimei (Hongmei Zhang), and butler Lao Huang (Chaoming Cui) all live uneventfully until a mutual friend Zhang Zhichen (Wei Li) shows up. It's very much a human driven story and it's very subtly done. There's nothing overly dramatic about it, it's all very calm and collected. It's a film I rarely hear about unless I seek it out and that's a shame because Spring in a Small Town is a good movie.