Lovebird's nests = Yuan yang lou

Description: The story follows six newly-wed couples living in the same apartment block; it examines how these ordinary small families cope with their everyday lives and how they retain their ‘joie de vivre’. A young working couple is passionate and cheerful, but their lack of education and manners reflect their life with capricious mood swings and constant arguments. The director’s wife is gentle and kindhearted, and even though the family is full of gentle warmth, their life is often plain and tasteless, leading them to question their passion for each other. The artist couple suffers from repression, one is often silent and uncommunicative, the other is narrow-minded and often filled with jealousy; the arrival of a young female art student commences a period of uncertain instability of their everyday life, however it also triggers them to reveal their inner passion for each other. A couple with an appreciable age gap is under distress from disharmonious sexual life, though after self-adjustments, the couple restores their satisfactory domesticity. A sophisticated scholar’s couple has great spirits for achievement, therefore in reflection, their lifestyle stands far away from the secular warmth and happiness of regular families. The “Salon” nature of the last family means the couple will always suffer under outside infestations, their lives are left powerless, but habitually not without pleasure and love for each other. Clearly, the world is not built on perfection; however, the true happiness really lies within the trivial, everyday life. (Wendy Xu, 2014)