How did Ann Hui bring Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City and Eighteen Springs to life?
Director Ann Hui has adapted three of Eileen Chang’s stories for the big screen. We look at two: Love in a Fallen City and Eighteen Springs
Celebrated novelist Eileen Chang Ai-ling was not only a film fan, but she also worked as a film critic and wrote movie scripts. Chang’s own novellas were often considered difficult to adapt for the screen.
“Her stories are beautiful because of their language and details, not their plots,” critic Paul Fonoroff wrote in the South China Morning Post.
Love in a Fallen City (1984)
Hui tends to adapt her directorial approach to the needs of the script. Love in a Fallen City relies on wide shots, slow pans and a consistently genteel approach to depict the upper echelons of life in Shanghai, achieving a careful sophistication rare for 1980s Hong Kong cinema.
This is perfectly captured in a garden party scene where Hui’s smoothly sweeping camera eavesdrops on wealthy guests, mimicking Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard on a smaller scale.