Eighteen Springs - BAN SHENG YUAN

Based on a novel by Eileen Chang, this melodrama unfolds in the Shanghai of the 1930s. Manjing, a young woman from a formerly well-off family, works in a factory where she meets Shijun, the son of wealthy mer- chants from Nanjing. In spite of Shijun's reservations about Manjing's family - her sister, Manlu, works as a nightclub hostess - they gradually fall in love. The expected progression from engagement to marriage is interrupted, first by Manjing's hesitation to go through with this step, then by Shijun's rejection of her family, and finally by the extreme abuse set up by the family towards Shijun. After a long period of separation, Shijun and Manzhen meet again but realize that their happiness survives only in their memories in a nostalgic reinvention of missed opportunities and the understanding they never reached.