Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Dai Sijie directs Balzac et La Petite Tailleuse Chinoise (The Little Chinese Seamstress), a film adaptation of his own best-selling autobiographical novel. Set in China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, the story follows Luo (Chen Kun) and Ma (Liu Ye), two young men from the city who are sent to a mountain village for a re-education in Maoist principles. They work with the peasants under the supervision of the village head man (Wang Shuangbao), who considers their violin to be a symbol of the bourgeoisie. Luo and Ma both fall in love with the little Chinese seamstress (Ziiou Xun), the daughter of the tailor (Chung Zhijun), and they read her forbidden works of Western literature including French writers Balzac and Dumas. The conclusion finds the two men reminincing about their experiences 30 years later. Balzac et La Petite Tailleuse Chinoise premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. more..
Director: Dai Sijie
Starring: Kun Chen, Zhou Xun, Ye Liu, Shuangbao Wang, Zhijun Cong
Sweet, funny, sad and profound -- the sort of film that becomes more remarkable when you realize it's based on someone's real life.
For an exquisitely melancholy story steeped in a sense of the past as a succession of great waves of political, ideological and economic change, it's fitting that the movie should end with an underwater sequence. It looks like a dream of a memory of a place about to be wiped out by the next great flood of history.
If the movie is straightforward and predictable in its attitude, it also exudes a sort of documentary lyricism.
Enlightenment is good, Dai acknowledges. But the movie's more provocative assertion is the notion that ignorance was also a kind of bliss.
In the end, it's a lovely little movie about very big things, and the smallness both illuminates it and keeps it from greatness.
Best Feature
Chicago International Film Festival (2002)
Sijie Dai
Ghent International Film Festival (2002)
Best Foreign Language Film
Golden Globes (2003)
Best Screenplay Adapted from Another Source
Golden Horse Film Festival (2003)
Best Asian Film
Hong Kong Film Awards (2004)
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