MFF ’18: Love Education

When it comes to marriage, it isn’t the love or the memories that really matter. It’s the paperwork. Alas, Qui Huiying’s father was not particularly diligent at documenting his two marriages, but those were chaotic times in the Mainland provinces. As a result, Qui and her father’s first wife find themselves in a standoff throughout Sylvia Chang’s Love Education (fortunately also starring Chang herself), which screens during the 2018 Miami Film Festival.

After the death of her mother, Qui decides her parents should be buried together, even though that would mean exhuming him from the grave “Nanna” tends every day. In fact, the soon-to-retire teacher is convinced this was her mother’s dying request, even though her husband Yin Xiaoping and daughter Weiwei totally missed it. Determining legal standing in this case will be a tricky business. Grandpa and Nanna were joined in an arranged marriage, but he left their famine-wracked village a few months later hoping to find opportunity in the big city. There he met Qui’s mother, whom he married according to more modern and legal conventions. However, neither has the right kind of official court marriage license to prove their rightful custodianship of his grave.

Meanwhile, Weiwei was falling for Da, a brooding hipster bar singer, at least until his ex and her young son showed up on his doorstep. Their relationship might sound like it will parallel that of Qui’s parents, but Chang is too sophisticated a filmmaker for such simplistic one-to-one gimmicks. Indeed, it soon becomes clear their halting romance is very much their own.

Granted, Love Education is messy in both smart ways that are true to life and in less fortunate reflections of a somewhat untidy screenplay. However, it is enormously refreshing to see an emotionally mature relationship-driven film that features intelligently drawn, fully dimensional female and male characters. Clearly, Chang has a special knack for this kind of drama, having also helmed the exquisitely delicate Murmur of the Hearts.

Of course, she is also one of our greatest living actresses. Critics love to laud Dame Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon as more mature actresses who are still glamorous, but that should apply one hundred-fold to Chang (just check out her recent work in Office and Mountains May Depart). This time around, she still somehow manages to sneak up on us, charging ahead as the dutiful-daughter-tiger-mother in the first two acts—and then suddenly lowering the boom on us in key scenes down the stretch.

Likewise, the formerly banned filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhaung gives a lowkey performance as Yin, until he suddenly just pulls the rug out from under us. Lang Yueting nicely portrays Weiwei’s process of maturing and coming into herself, while Geng Le adds some intriguing flair as the actor-parent of one of Qui’s problem students.

Love Education is an intimate film that makes you fee like you are practically a member of Qui’s family. Yet, buried within, there is some thinly veiled critiques of China’s longstanding record of polygamous practices in rural areas, as well as the chaotic mid-20^th Century ideological movements that left so many government records offices in a state of utter shambles. First and foremost, there is really terrific work from Sylvia Chang on both sides of the camera. Highly recommended for readers authors like Gail Tsukiyama and Lisa See, as well as Chang’s many fans, Love Education screens tomorrow (3/18), as part of this year’s Miami Film Festival.

Fortissimo Films at MoMA: Springtime in a Small Town (2002)

For years, filmmaker Fei Mu was considered politically incorrect in China, by virtue of being insufficiently political. Yet, due to the apolitical nature of his masterpiece Spring in a Small Town, a remake would ironically become a viable comeback vehicle for Tian Zhuangzhuang. Often at odds with censors, Tian was officially blacklisted by Chinese authorities after his prohibited 1993 Cultural Revolution drama The Blue Kite leaked out to the West. It was Fortissimo Films who shepherded his long awaited return to filmmaking across the festival circuit and global film market. Appropriately, Tian’s Springtime in a Small Town (trailer here) screens this Sunday as part of In Focus: Fortissimo Films, MoMA’s tribute to the unerringly tasteful film company.

Once glorious but now crumbling, Dai Liyan’s family house serves as a metaphor for his family. The defeated Japanese occupiers have retreated and spring is in the air. Yet, Dai is sick in body and spirit. He lives quietly with his spirited younger sister Dai Xiu, the loyal family retainer Old Huang, and his increasingly unhappy wife Yuwen. She dutifully tends to him, but her passive aggression is unmistakable. Things appear to have reached an uneasy equilibrium, until his childhood friend Zhang Zhichen pays a fateful visit.

It turns out Zhang also has quite a bit of history with Yuwen as well, having nearly been engaged years ago. Inevitably, sparks flare up again between the two frustrated lovers, despite their efforts not to hurt Dai. Further complicating matters, Dai Xiu also seems to have eyes for Zhang, which would be a match her brother would like to make. It all eventually unravels in a Chekhovian drama, featuring characters too tired for melodrama.

Clearly, Tian understood what made Fei’s film so exquisitely beautiful, recreating the original step by step, if not shot for shot. Like the source film, Tian’s Springtime is about regret and longing, not anger or lust. Indeed, the palpable sense of restraint is what makes both films so powerful.

In a remarkably delicate performance, Hu Jingfan is devastatingly brittle and conflicted as Yuwen. Arguably, she is the one member of Tian’s ensemble who eclipses the work of their great predecessors. Still, as the sickly Dai Liyan, Jun Wu notably conveys a depth of pathos that is quite compelling and acutely human. Si Si Lu is also a genuinely luminous presence and surprisingly moving as Dai Xiu. Only Bai Qing Xin risks disappointing those familiar with his forebear, never quite achieving the tragic nobility Li Wei brought to Zhang. (Perhaps one could also argue Tian lets his pivotal scene of drunkenness go on a tad too long.)

There is something wonderfully sad and lovely about this story that holds up perfectly a second time around. Largely set in the decrepit family home, Springtime could easily be adapted for the stage (though Tian and cinematographer Mark Li Ping-bing strikingly capture the crumbling grandeur of the city wall, which becomes a key meeting place for Zhang and Yuwen). It is all the more poignant when we speculate what lies ahead for these characters of faded “bourgeoisie” lineage in the chaos following 1949. Artful and profoundly humane, Tian’s Springtime is highly recommended during MoMA’s tribute to Fortissimo and Fei Mu’s original is even more highly recommended, under any circumstances. The former screens this Sunday (11/13) and Monday (11/21) as part of a first class showcase of some of the finest Asian film of the past two decades.