Spring Subway

Spring Subway is a 2002 Chinese romance film directed by Zhang Yibai and starring Xu Jinglei and Geng Le. Sixth Generation director Zhang Yang also plays a role. The film represents a relatively new genre in China, the artistic commercial film with its international urban sensibilities designed to appeal to young middle class Chinese. Spring Subway is a stylistic film that plays with chronological conventions and flashbacks, and with characters that often break the fourth wall to directly address the audience.

Jianbin Geng Le and Xiaohui Xu Jinglei are a young couple living in Beijing who have been married for seven years. As the film starts, the couple has begun to grow bored with their existence bringing their relationship to an impasse. Xiaohui, who works at a designing firm, tentatively begins a flirtatious relationship with one of her customers, Lao Hu, a coffeeshop owner played by director Zhang Yang. Jianbin, meanwhile, has recently been laid off, though he keeps it a secret from his wife by dressing for work every morning, hiding his briefcase in a public bathroom and riding the Beijing metro for most of the day.While riding the subway every day, Jianbin and the audience becomes aware of various romances and relationships blossoming around him. Wang Yao Fan Wei, a thirtyfouryearold cook is despondent when his blind date, Li Chuan Wang Ning, is seriously injured in a natural gas explosion. Meanwhile, a fellow subway passenger, a health food saleswoman Ke Lan who hawks her goods every day on the same subway car, discovers her boyfriend has been cheating on her and has decided to leave her. The unlikely pair of the cook and the saleswoman eventually find love and become engaged to be married. Another relationship also begins in the subway between Da Ming Tu Qiang, a young man, and a photodevelopment salesgirl, Tian Ai Gao Yuanyuan. The man, painfully shy, takes pictures of himself with a note asking to meet the girl, but he flees at the last moment. When Tian Ai finally finds and confronts him, he is too ashamed to speak, but manages to communicate to her his cell phone number as the train pulls away. ........

Source: Wikipedia