HKMDB Daily News

Dir. Lou Ye. Hong Kong/France. 2009. 115mins.

Using the flower as a metaphor is risky business for an artist, given its overexposure and abuse. Borrowing from stories from the 1920s from gifted Chinese author Yu Dafu, director Lou Ye, aided by Zeng Jian’s astonishing camerawork, manages to hit a poignant note with floral imagery in Spring Fever.

Close-ups of flowers not only open and close the film, they also pop up intermittently, mirroring shifts in both the story line and the state of mind of its gay protagonist. This integration of visuals and narrative, however, is the exception rather than the rule in this ambitious and - by mainland Chinese standards - daring project. The screenplay is so convoluted and contains so many loose ends that the intense style (fragmented editing, jerky, handheld camera) only highlights the movie’s occasional lapses into incoherence. Add to that relatively explicit sex scenes between males, and the result is small chance of finding an audience in most markets, including Lou Ye’s native China (where he is technically banned from filmmaking on account of the overt politics of Summer Palace). Gay festivals and possibly a few sophisticated urban markets should express interest.

The passionate relationship between a closeted, married intellectual, Wang Ping (Wu Wei), and the film’s central figure, travel agent by day, transvestite by night Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao) - a more stereotypical movie homosexual - is more daring by Chinese standards than it would be in most western countries, where it comes off as quaint and hackneyed. Lou Ye references Francois Truffaut’s classic ménage-a-trois Jules and Jim as an inspiration, but the film owes much more to Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together.

The gay Chinese men in the latter are manual laborers in Argentina, where they are not subjected to the same social constraints as provincial Nanjing residents Wang and Jiang. One of the fellows in Happy Together falls for a younger, naïve heterosexual co-worker; in Spring Fever, Jiang dumps the conflicted Wang, then goes after straight Luo Haitao (Chen Sicheng), whom Wang’s jealous and vindictive wife has hired to follow and film them in flagrante. The inclusion of Luo’s girlfriend in the web of relationships complicates matters for the viewer as much as it does for the men. Tossing in a full-time cross-dresser friend of Jiang’s who becomes his lover, a relationship that flies in the face of real life, serves as an upbeat ending but feels tacked on. Lou Ye does delve successfully into more universal subjects such as loyalty, betrayal, and obsession, but an overall triteness undermines their impact.

Like the 19th-century German philosopher Schopenhauer, Yu Dafu saw weeds in any field of flowers. In spite of the beauty of the movie’s lotuses, Lou Ye conveys the writer’s cynicism. On-screen text reads, “The sky is covered by grey clouds, like decomposing bodies;” pounding rain follows the troubled characters throughout the film. Yet the attempt at optimism prevails. When one of the men finally pulls himself together, the director once again quotes Yu Dafu: “Flowers always know the season in which they must bloom.”

Production companies
Dream Factory HK
Rosem Films

International sales
Wild Bunch
Tel: (33) 1 53 01 50 20

Producers
Nai An
Sylvain Bursztejn

Screenplay
Mei Feng

Cinematography
Zeng Jian

Editors
Robin Weng
Zeng Jian
Florence Bresson

Production design
Peng Shaoying

Music
Peyman Yazdanian

Main cast
Qin Hao
Chen Sicheng
Tan Zhuo
Wu Wei
Jiang Jiaqi

http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/asia-pacific/features/spring-fever-chun-feng-chen-zui-de-ye-wan/5001085.article

Spring Fever
Chunfeng chenzuide yewan

(Hong Kong - France) A Le Pacte (in France) release of a Dream Factory H.K. (Hong Kong)/Rosem Films (France) production, with participation of Fonds Sud Cinema, French Ministry of Culture & Communication, CNC, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Nai An, Sylvain Bursztejn. Co-producer, Lou Ye. Directed by Lou Ye. Screenplay, Mei Feng.

With: Qin Hao, Chen Sicheng, Tan Zhuo, Wu Wei, Jiang Jiaqi, Huang Xuan, Liang Ming.
(Mandarin, Cantonese dialogue)

By DEREK ELLEY
Three years after tweaking the nose of China’s Film Bureau with full-frontal nudity and direct references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident in “Summer Palace,” mainland helmer Lou Ye is at it again — this time with lashings of gay sex — in the five-way ensembler “Spring Fever.” Pic circumvents the bureau’s five-year filmmaking ban on Lou by being registered as a Hong Kong-French co-production, though beyond fests (especially gay ones) and the hardcore arthouse crowd, this over-long, very Euro-flavored “Spring” won’t make many B.O. wickets bloom.

Shot clandestinely in Nanjing, central China, on digital equipment — cleanly transferred to 35mm, though murky in interiors — “Spring Fever” aims to evoke an atmosphere in which characters are swept up in a metaphysical fever, which blurs some sexual inclinations while reinforcing others. The movie’s poetic Chinese title literally means “A Night Deeply Drunk on the Spring Breeze.”

With its shifting, unstable weather — from spring rain and overcast haze to sunny spells — the pic does intermittently evoke a time of year when nature is stirring after a long period of hibernation. But the effect is weakened by the lack of visual consistency in d.p. Zeng Jian’s lensing, and with a lot of the action taking place in dully lit interiors, the connection between nature and the human world remains more in the pic’s English and Chinese titles than in what comes through on the bigscreen. Overall tone, especially in the second half, is more of autumnal melancholy than of spring fever.

Helmer Lou starts off as he means to continue, with a full-on (but genitalia-free) sex sequence between married Wang Ping (Wu Wei) and his male lover, Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao). What Wang doesn’t know is that his wife, schoolteacher Lin Xue (Jiang Jiaqi), is having him followed by unemployed Luo Haitao (Chen Sicheng), who snaps photos of the two men together.

During an awkward dinner a trois, in which Jiang poses as Wang’s old university friend, Lin plays along. But when Wang later finds out she’s had him followed, Lin not only bawls her hubby out at home but also humiliates Jiang at his workplace.

These brief scenes, superbly played by actress Jiang Jiaqi, are among the few authentically emotional and gripping sequences in the movie, which otherwise schematically moves feelings and characters around at the script’s convenience.

Things turn more melancholy and moony as Luo — in a sudden development that’s never properly justified dramatically or psychologically — becomes less interested physically in his g.f. (Tan Zhuo) and more sexually drawn to his initial quarry, Jiang. Ensuing emotional complications over the remaining 75 minutes result in a suicide, much heart-searching (though little of it via meaningful dialogue) and one scene after another of gay lovemaking.

The screenplay is much better constructed than the untidy “Summer Palace,” but the pic is still a long, long way from Lou’s inventive and involving “Suzhou River” and flawed but impressively ambitious period drama, “Purple Butterfly.” As Lou has seemingly catered more and more to Euro tastes (and Western sensibilities), his vision and imagination have become progressively more restricted.

Script has little idea what to do with Wang or either of the female characters, all of whom are left stranded as the pic focuses on Luo’s homosexual “affair” with Jiang. Perfs are OK, but with little to chew on in the script, the actors almost seem to blend into each other at times.

Atmospheric score by Iranian composer Peyman Yazdanian (”Summer Palace”) adds some color.

Camera (color, DV-to-35mm), Zeng Jian; editors, Robin Weng, Zeng, Florence Bresson; music, Peyman Yazdanian; additional music, Mickey Zhang; art director, Peng Shaoying; sound (Dolby Digital), Fu Kang; assistant director, Zhao Zhiyang; casting, Zhang Yanjia. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 13, 2009. Running time: 116 MIN.