For a film that centers on the Cultural Revolution in China, “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” is a light, easy movie to watch.
“Balzac” is based on a book with the same title written by Dai Sijie. As can be seen in his Wiki page, his story is very similar to the script.
Children of middle class parents were sent to camps to work the land as peasants (and learn to revere Mao Zedong at the same time).
The film narrates the story of two young men who were “banished” to be “re-educated” in a village, because they were too bourgeoisie-like. Their doctor parents are class enemies during Mao’s time.
“Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” is short yet profound, funny yet serious. Luo and Ma are the two central characters of the plot who falls in love (one secretly) with the Little Chinese Seamstress of the village. LCS is an ignorant girl, one who can not read nor write but one who charms the two city intellectuals with her innocence and in Luo’s case, her sensuality.
Both Luo and Ma aim to enlighten LCS by reading to her banned Western novels. Those by Balzac particularly struck her.
A scene that endeared to me was when Luo was teaching LCS how to say “I love you” in Putonghua forcing her to repeat the line repeatedly (“我爱你，我爱你， 我爱你”) until she loses her village accent.
The village chief is another memorable character. He is very arrogant but ultimately succumbs to knowledge offered by Luo and Ma. Like when he is suffering from a toothache, he had no choice but to ask Luo (who is the son of a dentist) to perform surgery on him.
Sijie weaves the story beautifully such that the re-education of Luo and Ma (due to the Cultural Revolution) is deemed useless, because it was the village people who were actually being educated by them.
This movie
The surrealism of the ending leaves a sad and lingering note with the viewers. The three somehow return to the youth of their dreams (using the theatrical effect of walking in water) to emphasize that it is just a series of what-ifs. The film also shows China going through a historical change–a new phase–so to speak, which then gives viewers enough satisfaction as to the ending.
Curious? You can get a copy of the movie or novel via Amazon.com:
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that’s cool. Always wanted to check it out just haven’t found the time.
not to be rude, but this review hardly lives up to the quality of writing i’ve come to expect from cnreviews
Read the book and liked the movie. It was from this movie that I became charmed with the actress Zhou Xun. She made that dry voice sexy :)
Hey everyone, thanks for the comments! I really enjoyed the film. I do hope to get my hands on the book version soon!
Thanks for the review! I checked out the movie after reading your post and I really like it. It’s not too sad/heavy like some of the movies regarding that period could be, but rather sweet and innocent, and inspiring. The dialect is endearing too as it is spoken by in our household by older generations.
Just curious, the setting of the movie is quite beautiful, do you know if it is a real place, and if it is still exist?
Hi Babygrand!
According to the LA Times–
“Director Dai Sijie and his crew drove two hours on treacherous mountain trails in China’s Sichuan province to arrive at their filming location each day, sometimes using dynamite to blast away boulders that had fallen overnight. Up a set of stairs carved into a rock face was a lakeside village barely touched by modernization. There were no showers or refrigerators, and the only contact with the outside world came via the few satellite dishes that dotted the pristine landscape.”
I agree, the place is extremely beautiful!
An invaluably sad but exceptionally beautiful work of art realistically depicting instability and mutability of all things in modern life. It’s inevitably fluid like nature of human evolution between one époque to another influenced by new trends of individualism, nuclear family and globalisation in particular in this story. All these evolutions comes at a terrible costs to stability of our emotional life and collapse of traditional sense of community, almost always followed by a devastatingly painful separation.
I can feel ethereal touch of Author’s remnant filial love to his mother country China. It is easy to see that the Author was torn between his deep seated love for old China before the cultural revolution and Ambition for prosperity on his chosen land (France) at the moment of his life time decision making. This is something that not many understand unless you are forced to leave from your homeland and love ones for a cause. I have left Japan , Kyoto and a noble born beloved fiancée along with almost all things I perceived exquisite at that time for an ambitious cause. Now I am in a terrible state of homesick.
Sentimentalism is further augmented by an outstanding soundtracks with his genius touch in a perfect synchronisation with emotion portrayed in screenplay. Since I have played harpsichord continuo accompaniment part of George Frederick Handle’s tragic operas such as Alcina, Otone and Radamisto for student soprano singers during rehearsals in the past, I can readily feel Author’s masterful quality of refined artistic mind in every scene. Author must be someone who understands classical and baroque music quite well. Pachelbel, Haendel, Scarlatti and Albinoni and Mozart in particular.
This is a second film that I bought for my collection of Dai Sijie’s works. I am also a fan of Les Filles du Botaniste. It is such a sad film but exquisite work of art. I must admit that he is a genius of screenplay depicting moments of such a painful separation and innate strength of women. Every young woman has dreams of being swept up into a great adventure, of being the beautiful princess. Lamentably, when women grow up, they are often swept up into a life filled merely with demands, duty and responsibility. Many women are tired, struggling under the merciless pressure to be of a faithful servant, or a caregiver for children, husband or authoritarian father as seen in Les Filles du Botaniste. Who else can reproduce the sentiment so vividly on the screen with such poetic touch today? Perhaps no one else but refined humanist Director Dai Sijie! Julien Kujo, Palo Alto, California
Hi there, Julien!
Thanks for your beautiful commentary.
This is actually my first Dai Sijie, and I hope to read more of his works. :-) Could you recommend a few?