Director Zhang Yibai makes an impressive debut with Spring Subway, a stylish urban romance about the silent suffering of a modern Chinese couple. Geng Le is Jianbin, a recently unemployed Beijing urbanite whose marriage to designer Xiaohui is hitting a difficult patch after nearly seven years of matrimony. Xiaohui finds friendship – and possibly more – with a customer, while Jianbin keeps up appearances by going to work every morning and riding the Beijing subway all day. On the subway, life continues for him, as he views various couples falling in and out of love. He even becomes emotionally involved with a schoolteacher, and slowly the wall of silence between the married couple becomes ever more impenetrable. Zhang Yibai finds rich territory for exploration among these emotionally-stilted modern Chinese, who might be able to make their lives work if only they could communicate. Shot with stylish, enthralling cinematic panache, Spring Subway is an offbeat and stunning work from an important new voice in Chinese cinema.
Directed by Yibai Zhang | Starring : Geng Le, Jinglei Xu, Yuanyuan Gao, Yang Zhang, Lan Ke | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival
Chinese Cinema 