Cinema
Regret for the Past
傷逝
Shui Hua · 1981
Synopsis
Beijing, in the early twenties. Juansheng, a young intellectual marked by the May Fourth Movement, lives alone and without purpose until he meets Zijun, a young woman from a good family who wants to free herself from her relatives. After a performance of A Doll's House, she leaves her family to live with him without being married. Zijun's parents have Juansheng dismissed, and he cannot make a living by his pen, and the young woman gradually grows gloomy.
Context
The film adapts the story that Lu Xun dated 21 October 1925. According to the Chinese PEN Centre, the commission was made in 1979 for the centenary of the writer's birth; it was Shui Hua's first film in more than ten years, and he was reunited there with Wang Xingang and Lin Ying sixteen years later. The screenplay lends Juansheng a social reflection and adds the evening at the theatre. In 1981 the film received the Ministry of Culture's prize for outstanding films, then, in 1982, the prize for photography at the Golden Rooster awards, along with a second prize: editing according to 1905 and Hong Kong, props according to the PEN Centre.
Who it is for
An intimate drama of about an hour and a half, in Mandarin, centred on a couple; no French release is established.
Prizes and reception
In 1982, J. Hoberman judged it in The Village Voice “naively obvious and totally obscure”, while noting its superimpositions.
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