CHUN FENG CHEN ZUI DE YE WAN (SPRING FEVER)
China, 2009, 115 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Lou Ye.
Lies, secrets, infidelities, sexuality, identity. A great number of themes, especially for a Chinese film that deals with same-sex and bisexual relationships presented in direct and sometimes explicit ways.
However, the film is hard going, wandering at times, even meandering, and long. A plot driven by action and causes it is not. Rather, it is episodic, characters moving in and out of one another's lives, sometimes for a considerable length of screen time. The film is a co-production with France (Lou Ye has had years of difficulties with Chinese censorship and is at present banned from China for five years) which may have contributed to the visual style, often long close-ups, hand-held digital camera following the characters. Much of the footage is dark and shadowy, reflecting either and economy of production or a thematic of shadowiness.
The film does not have the hope of spring and the fever is often subdued and interiorised except for the passionate sequences. The film uses the symbol of the lotus visually and in texts read from a Chinese author in Nanjing in 1923, poetic texts, enigmatic texts which suggest that the protagonists are all floating in the uncertainties of their choices and the emotional consequences.
1.A Chinese film, French co-production? The director, controversy, his reputation, being banned in China? Controversial issues in his films?
2.The Nanjing setting, the old capital, the spirit of the city compared with Beijing or Shanghai, the author quoted and his living there in the early 20th century? His book in 1923?
3.The style of the film, visually dark, the focus on the lotus, digital camerawork, fluid movement, the emphasis on close-ups?
4.The structure: narrative, causal or not, episodic, crossed paths and journeys? The musical score, the songs?
5.Sexuality, relationships, marriage, infidelity, man to man, bisexuality, the place of women? The visuals, the psychological? Sexuality within marriage, with the young student, the transvestites and the clubs?
6.The opening and the two men, the trip, casual, the sexual encounter, the young student taking photos, bringing them to the wife? The man’s later discovering them? His deceit, meeting the other man, the cover story about the university, having the meal together, the travel agent knowing that the wife knew? The wife, her upset, the family, not willing to divorce her husband, her anger, breaking the office of the travel agent, fighting with her husband, his slapping her? His suicide and her reaction, paying off the student? Attempting to kill the lover?
7.The married man, his love, decision, his lies, loneliness, feeling bereft, the lover cutting him off, the fruitless phone calls, his going to the park, killing himself?
8.The travel agent, his life, work, relationships, the wife and her reaction, trashing his office, severing the relationship, not answering the phone? Taking refuge in the clubs, the bars, drinking, wandering? The young man and his contact, admiring him, drinking, going home, the mutual advances, leaving? The young man’s sexual image, the mirror? His deciding to stay, bringing his girlfriend? The bisexual behaviour? The shower and his relationship with the agent? The girl seeing the kiss? The three going to the bar, the songs? Three going on the road, the effect? The young woman going? The two men breaking up on the road, leaving and weeping? The wife slitting the agent’s throat? His survival, getting the lotus tattoo, with the woman at the end?
9.The factory girl, her love for the student, their dates, meals, the raid in the factory, her being told to take the money from the boss, the relationship with the boss, his coming out of prison, going to the restaurant, her being upset? Abandoning him? Her place in the threesome?
10.The end – and the agent by himself, with the woman? The meaning of sexuality? Identity? The importance of being neither male nor female but human? The impact for the perspective of Chinese people? For audiences around the world?
