****

Nuan is a beautiful rural girl who has been loved by three men, but despite their promises, only one of them is really capable of offering her everlasting comfort.

Jing He (Guo Xiaodong), a government employee from Beijing, returns to his home village to take care of some business for his old school teacher. On a small bridge, he reunites with his first love Nuan (Li Jia), now a lame housewife married to "the dumb (Teruyuki Kagawa)" and with a five year old daughter. Already has a family of his own, Jing He cannot help but thinking about the past. Jing He and Nuan are best friend since birth, but they never made it formal, something would not be allowed according to the tradition. When a local opera company makes a visit to their village, Nuan quickly falls in love with a young and handsome actor. By the time of his departure, the actor promises to come back and make her an actress in the provincial capital. He never did. Nuan rediscovers love on Jing He and their relationship finally becomes an open secret. Suddenly a rope swing accident makes Nuan permanently limped and her dream of becoming an actress irreversibly crashed. Soon after, Jing He gets admitted by a university in Beijing, which usually means he would be able to start living in the cities, some opportunity rarely offered to citizens of the countryside. Jing He promises that he will come back for Nuan, but as his life drastically changes, something really inevitable, neither one of them is willingly to continue their relationship. Then the dumb (the only name he is referring to) jumps into Nuan's life and warms up her broken heart.

Director Huo Jianqi belongs to the Fifth Generation Director, but is relatively a less known member of the circle. When Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige have started enjoying making mega budget commercialized epics with superstars, Huo Jianqi is still staying with the subject made the generation famous - telling simple stories about the ordinary people. Like his previews work Na Ren Na Shan Na Gou (Postmen In The Mountains), Huo Jianqi presents us another beautifully photographed story carried through by a wonderful cast.

The film is frequently cut back-in-forth between the present, which is a dark-colored humid and later rainy summer, and the past, which is a golden and sunny autumn. Memory of the falling in love for the first time is always sweet but for so many reasons, such memory rarely has a happily ever after ending. Nuan quietly tells a story of such, which looks so simple that people would call it a cliché based on the cliché of life. Makers of the film never tried to tell a dramatic story but only creates a situation to let the fact to happen in the most normal way. The dumb is the only character being gradually unfolded throughout the film. Not until the last moment, that we finally realize his love to Nuan is so selfish that he is willing to give up his own happiness to provide Nuan a chance for better life.

In the end, Jing He quietly leaves the village, alone. He makes another promise, this time, to Nuan's little daughter. He says he will come back and take her to a university in a big city, something he can no longer offer to Nuan. Will he keep his word this time? Only time could tell.

Based on short story White Dog Swing by Mo Yan (note: miss-credited for Qing Chun Zhi Ge by IMDB), written by Qiu Shi, directed by Huo Jianqi, starring Li Jia, Guo Xiaodong and Teruyuki Kagawa.

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Reviewed by Meng Ye