Review of Spring Fever (2009) by Naoya K — 22 Aug 2012
Lou Ye, who has been forbidden to make a film by the Chinese Government for seven years because of his last film Summer palace, "illegally" makes this film to be what he should be and is - a filmmaker.
This film is valuable in that way, although it is not as powerful as his other works (probably largely because of inconvenience of guerrilla shooting). This film would, and should, be compared with Kar-Wai Wang's "Happy Together," and I think "Spring Fever" is weaker than "Happy -" due to lack of center-focused powerful and attractive character(s) - in other words, too many main characters and unnecessary episodes.
In fact, Lou Ye obviously has Kar-Wai Wang in his mind a lot in making this film (not only similarities to "Happy Together" but also "Wings of Desire" - the dancing man scene - and "Ashes of Times" - quotes of both actual sentences and style from traditional Chinese literature -), but overall, this film is too powerless and repetitious (in terms of style) to be a breakthrough for Ye, while "Chungking Express" was for Kar-Wai Wang (who was in danger of being hiatus as a filmmaker due to the financial failure of "Ashes of Times").
This review of Spring Fever (2009) was written by Naoya K on 22 Aug 2012.
Spring Fever has generally received mixed reviews.
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