Xiao cheng zhi chun (Spring in a Small Town)

"Spring in a Small Town" is a masterful chamber drama and a radical cinematic-poetic experiment with subtle psychological power. Five people spend several days together in a dilapidated villa: Yuwen, her ailing husband Liyan, his lively younger sister, their elderly servant, and the visitor Zhiwen, Yuwen’s former lover and Liyan’s old schoolmate. Yuwen’s unconventionally employed voice-over narrates the repressed erotic longings that shake the already crumbling moral foundations of this postwar, ruined society. Fei Mu’s cinematic language draws upon and anticipates trends in modern cinema such as film noir, neorealism, and the Nouvelle Vague. Once panned by left-wing critics for “spreading passive, decadent, and depressing moods,” "Spring in a Small Town" is now recognized worldwide as an avant-garde masterpiece.