Metrograph

Made in spite of a five-year ban on filmmaking imposed on its director by the People’s Republic of China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television following the 2006 release of his Summer Palace, Ye’s Spring Fever, shot clandestinely in Nanjing on digital video, is a moody, visceral, at times downright lyrical plunge into the eastern city as seen in smoggy daytime and steamy night, concerned with two overlapping love triangles: a married man, Wang (Wu Wei), is discovered to be having an affair with another man, Jiang (Qin Hao), by a private detective hired by Wang’s wife and, after the affair breaks off, Jiang drifts into a lust-drenched menage with the ostensibly straight gumshoe, Luo (Chen Sicheng), who blew the whistle on he and Wang, as well as Luo’s girlfriend (Tan Zhuo). A compelling, artfully disheveled film about the messy compulsions of the heart.

Distributor: The Festival Agency