Review of Spring in a Small Town

Frequently voted China's greatest film ever by Chinese critics, as well as Chinese film enthusiasts from the outside, and, frankly, I don't get it at all. What I saw was one of the most generic melodramas imaginable, blandly directed and acted, with a complete shrew for a protagonist. Wei Wei (don't laugh) is that shrew, a young married woman who has suffered alongside her tubercular husband (Yu Shi) for the past several years. It is post WWII, and they live with the husband's teenage sister (Hongmei Zhang) in a dilapidated home with not much money (the man had been wealthy when they married). Along comes the husband's old best friend (Wei Li), who also used to be the wife's boyfriend when they were teens. She considers running away from her husband with this man, while the husband pretty much remains oblivious, thinking he may engage his little sister to his friend. That's the set-up, and it doesn't go anywhere you wouldn't expect it to. I've actually seen the remake, directed by Blue Kite director Zhuangzhuang Tian. It runs a half hour longer, and is actually kind of dull, too, but at least it was pretty. This supposed classic is pretty intolerable.