Springtime in a Small Town

It is a beautifully acted, exquisitely considered chamber drama of subtlety and nuance: spellbindingly tender and utterly involving

Tian's movie seems to be among the finest expressions of the Chinese new wave.

Exquisitely made love story.

There's a painterly translucence to this ''Springtime,'' and a mystery, too; each frame is as delicately poised and lit as a Vermeer portrait of a woman, beckoning but unknowable.

As Mark Li Ping-bing's beautiful cinematography observes the change of season, the movie becomes a broader meditation on rebirth, and how, in the language of T. S. Eliot, April, the month that stirs such hopes for the future, is also "the cruellest month" for awakening such keen desire.

A beautiful, slow-motion melodrama.

The film exudes a sense of fleetingness; however static these lives may be, Tian's narrative perfectly evokes a changing season.