Movie Box Review

The 62nd Annual Cannes Film Festival closing ceremony took place. Although many stars and directors have already left, the red carpet still glittered with stars. For example Cinefondation jury member and famous Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi appeared in a tight long silver dress. Jury member Shu Qi appeared in a blue long dress. She also responded to the master of ceremony's questions in English but mischievously mixed its with Chinese. She said that she was a little reluctant to leave Cannes because she had to return to Hong Kong right away.

Chinese screen writer Mei Fang with SPRING FEVER won Best Screenplay. He is teaching at the Beijing Film Academy and the supervising instructor of this year's graduation class. His students next week will defend their graduation theses so he could not make time to accept the award at Cannes. He could only ask director Lou Ye to accept it on his behalf. Mei Fang expressed that the award was somewhat a surprise.

Lou Ye said that he and screen writer Mei Fang have worked together for a long time and revealed how difficult the production was. Lou Ye expressed that Mei Fang was very proud of his award and hoped that young Chinese directors would be able to freely make movies. At the same time he did not want this film's production and award to bring any trouble to anyone on the production team, and he believed that would not happen. Independence is something that every filmmaker could achieve and is also a basic condition.

Photo courtesy of takungpao.com

The Mainland film SPRING FEVER premiered at Cannes, the first film in competition to appear. The film revolves around four people's complicated romantic and sexual relationships. Lou Ye sets his sight on homosexual group's underground lifestyle conditions, as the subject and the visuals again challenge the sensitive bottomline. Yet after the film's screening, the response is not as stimulating as the subject itself.

After the screening, the official publication SCREEN stated that SPRING FEVER overall is better than Lou Ye's previous film. The film is very ambitious but lacks powerful character descriptions. Even if the audience understands the complex and confusing relationships, the film cannot convey the pain inside the characters; Lou Ye's style has shades of Wong Kar Wai and Jia Zhangke's films, but his own style has not been formed yet.

A Shanghai reporter says that the relationships are full of twists but awkward, the cast performance is average. A Taiwan reporter describes the relationships as "thrilling". Yet the European media are generous with the film. A English reporter claims that he has never seen Lou Ye's work before and originally thought this was a normal same sex love triangle, but was pleasantly surprised to see the film's concern for other people in the same sex phenomenon: homosexuals who in order to hide their identities choose legal marriage mates.