Director Lou Ye continues to prove he's one of the more daring directors working in China today with his latest, "Spring Fever." Or perhaps I should say, one of the more daring directors not working in China today, for Lou was placed on the government censors' blacklist in 2006 after his last film, "Summer Palace" — which covered the dual taboos of the Tiananmen Square massacre and hot on-screen sex — was screened at Cannes without official approval.
Lou was banned from filmmaking for five years, a harsh punishment as this was his second "offense." (His debut, "Weekend Lover," earned him a two-year ban.) The presumption of a government that it has the right to decide whether its citizens can or cannot make art is rather astounding, and speaks volumes about the true, Stalinist face of the Chinese regime, which we've all been brainwashed to ignore so that our corporations can take advantage of its cheap, endlessly exploitable pool of nonunionized labor.
But I digress. Lou skirted the ban by shooting surreptitiously in Nanjing and by obtaining funding from France and Hong Kong. "Spring Fever" still can't be released in China, but it has played the festival circuit, where it picked up an award for best screenplay at Cannes, which was perhaps rewarding the filmmakers for persistence more than anything else.