snow9

I watched this movie because I really enjoyed the lead actress, Lingyu Ruan, in an earlier film called The Goddess. It is a very late silent film, which I guess would be due to the distribution issues involved with releasing a talkie in a country where so many different dialects are spoken. Oddly enough though, the version I watched actually did have an audio track, with not only music and sound effects, but dubbed over intertitles as well. Anyway, Lingyu Ruan's acting was once again really outstanding and I thought that this was overall a better film than The Goddess. It tells the story of Wei Ming, a feminist intellectual trying to make an independent living in a nearly completely male chauvinistic society. She has one enlightened male friend who is trying to help her get her book published, but she is surrounded by misogynistic men who only want to use and degrade her. Once her daughter falls ill with leukemia things go from bad to worse, and though I don't want to completely spoil the ending, it is not a happy one at all. The relevance of that this film had at the time is reflected in how grimly foreboding it was of the lead actress' own fate. Going into acting was one of the few ways women could make an independent living during this time, sadly Ruan and quite a few actresses would end up just like Wei Ming.

Late Spring was a very touching and profound film for me and a great example of a movie which tells its story more visually than with its narrative. This is something I appreciated very much as I do think Japanese films can sometimes have the tendency to spell things out a little too blatantly. It tells a story of marriage, not just between people, but between cultures, reflecting the rapid Westernization which Japan was experiencing during the period that this film was made. The way people sit, their furniture and the clothes they wear are all very important in showing where every character stands in this marriage between the old and the coming new during each scene. Good examples of this, which show the change taking place, are the contrast between the very first scene and the very last scene, as well as the two separate scenes which take place at the same bar. I really enjoy a film like this, for which you have to use a bit of thought to figure out what it's trying to get across, yet doesn't drive you completely crazy like for example 2001: A Space Odyssey.