Critic Reviews
| 100 |
Village Voice
Tian's movie seems to be among the finest expressions of the Chinese new wave.
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| 100 |
Los Angeles Times
For Tian, who was banned from directing by Chinese authorities for a decade, it marks a triumphant return; for those who have loved the filmmaker's work in the past, few resurrections have seemed as welcome.
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| 90 |
LA Weekly
Simply put, it represents the work of a filmmaker so exhilaratingly in command of his craft that he can, among other things, turn a single image of two people standing next to each other -- fully clothed, their bodies not quite touching -- into one of the most sublimely erotic moments we have ever beheld on the screen.
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| 90 |
Variety
Exquisitely made love story.
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| 88 |
New York Post
Can be summed up in one word: style.
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| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
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.
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| 80 |
The New York Times
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.
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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
G. Allen Johnson
Only a director who truly knows repression could have made a movie so subtle and so understanding.
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| 70 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Has the suffocating intensity of great chamber drama.
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| 70 |
Chicago Reader
This erotically charged drama may not be quite as great as the original, but it's an amazing and beautiful work just the same.
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| 70 |
TV Guide
A beautiful, slow-motion melodrama.
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| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Richard James Havis
Should please art house buffs across the board. Connoisseurs of Chinese film will be pleased to discover that Tian's meticulous talent has not withered during his enforced hiatus. Moviegoers who like their visions of China rarefied and past tense will delight in the careful period setting.
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