The film marked the second time Hui directed an Eileen Chang adaptation (the first was 1984’s Love in a Fallen City).

At the factory Manzhen meets two former male classmates, Xu Shuhui (Huang Lei) and Shen Shijun (Leon Lai), and the three become firm friends.

Manzhen falls in love with the introverted Shijun, who hails from a wealthy family in Nanjing and is working in Shanghai because he does not want to inherit his father’s merchandising business.

Shijun’s family (believing Manzhen’s sister works at a sordid occupation) opposes their relationship and tries to match him with a cousin, Shi Cuizhi (Annie Wu).

Time Out magazine compared Eighteen Springs's "retrospective voiceovers" to Wong Kar-wai’s, calling it "visually lush and beautifully layered" and likening it to "a lyrical, poignant souvenir".

[4] In a comprehensive review, Shelly Kraicer compared Lai's performance to Wu’s and found him wanting: Leon Lai fills space handsomely, but in his scenes with her, he is negative energy: you can almost see how hard Wu is working, how much energy she has to put out to make the scenes work (although they do).

Anita Mui, as Shujun's older sister, shows both the power and limitations of this option: she strikes an unforgettable set of gorgeously sinister poses, which seem expressly designed for the camera.

Against the expectations imposed by the melodrama genre, she builds a character out of small, lightly sketched, delicately nuanced moments.

When Wu shows Manjing's [sic] shock, despair, and determination to survive what's thrown at her, all of which play briefly across her face as she is told that Shujun [sic]) has married someone else, we're witnessing great acting; that illuminates character, resonates with the film's structure, and at the same time subverts its overtly melodramatic form.