I feel lucky that the Art Film Cinema of Greenbelt is just across the street from our office building. After dilly-dallying for days, I finally decided to watch Dai Sijie’s “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress� (Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse Chinoise) which is a Chinese and French co-production. I regret not watching it earlier. It’s one of the films that I would love to watch over an over again. It is sad, but would later make you smile as you were enlightened by the ideas presented in the story.
I love the film, not only because of their cute actors, but also because it reminds us of how important art is, the changing powers of knowledge earned from reading books and how a beautiful written work could transform a community.
The film is based on Dai Sijie’s autobiographical novel of the same title. Its synopsis reads:
At the height of Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for "re-education." The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix Mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violin---as well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor.
But it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed.
From within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling.
This is what critic Jamie Russell wrote about the film:
"Revolutionary peasants will never be corrupted by a filthy bourgeois chicken!" declares a local Communist party leader near the beginning of "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress", tossing a cookbook into the fire. As opening scenes go, it's one that sums up everything that writer-director Dai Sijie's film is fighting against.
Arriving in the Phoenix Mountains for "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution, bourgeois city boys Ma (Ye Lui) and Luo (Kun Chen) discover a world dominated by petty rivalries and blinkered ignorance.
It's a community in which even their violin comes under suspicion (most, if not all, of the residents in that community are illiterate) - at least until they convince the local radicals that a Mozart sonata is a political mountain song ("Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao").
After months of toiling the fields, the boys discover a cache of foreign books and try to do some re-education of their own. They read the novels of Flaubert, Gogol, and Balzac to the local seamstress (Xun Zhou), whose thirst for uncensored knowledge makes her willing to risk her life for art.
A French-Chinese production (rather appropriate, given the subject matter), Dai Sijie's film - based on his own best-selling autobiographical novel of the same name - presents an overly simplistic vision of art as salvation that threatens to turn its three leads into ciphers rather than characters.
Yet, building on its carefully constructed scenes between Ma, Luo, and the little seamstress who they both fall in love with, this is a beautiful paean to a time long past.
Reliving his youth, Dai Sijie finds both joy and sadness in the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution - sadness in the misery of those years of strict indoctrination, but uplifting joy in the realization that change can bring freedom.
As the film's awkward, closing coda proves, though, sometimes love means letting go.
Did I say I love the Film? Oh, yes, I said it already but it’s worthy saying it again. This is the film that would make you laugh at the innocence and ignorance of the people and the “manipulation� of the two re-educated boys just to get out of trouble from communist authorities. It would cause you to hate tyranny and how oppressed masses are further oppressed when leaders fuel their ignorance and made them blames all their woes to intellectuals and rich people. Which is very true in our country as can be seen how Erap and his cronies capitalize on rich vs. poor issue.
It, however, give you hope knowing that knowledge and an open mind can free us. It made you realize that the greatest oppression that a man could make to his fellowmen is to keep him ignorant forever and to subscribe to his ignorant beliefs.
This is the film that beautifully mixes love, coming of age tale and political criticism.
There are plenty of scenes that I love, but there are three scenes that until is etched in my mind.
First is, towards the ending of the film, the Little Seamstress (as she is called in her community) left her grandfather and decided to venture her life in the city. Lou, one of the re-educated boy who is in love with her and whom she had sexual relationship with, ran after her. Lou was the one who was reading Balzac works to her and all Lou wants was to bring her out of her ignorance. Lou asked her, as she left who changed you (Lou thinks that it was him), but the girl answered, “Balzac changed me.� Then she continued saying, there is one thing that I learned from Balzac and that is “a woman’s beauty is a priceless treasure.� And then she turned her back and left.
Another scene was also in the ending, 20 years after their exile in the Phoenix Mountains, Ma is already a world-renowned violinist and Lou is an authority in Dental Medicine. Ma saw a report that that Phoenix Mountain village will soon be covered with water as a dam will be created in the Yangtze River. Ma, decided to go back the village and look for Little Seamstress. She couldn’t be found. It was the time when the village people are paying tributes to their dead by floating paper boats with the name of the dead written on it. Ma decided to swim and look for Little Seamstress name in those paper boats.
The scene shifted to the airport where Ma and Lou had their reunion. In Lou’s house they watched the video taken by Ma in the village and the interview he had with the residents asking if they have recollection of the two re-educated boys. Then their conversation lead to Little Seamstress at this point Lou was crying (he is married already, but to another woman). He said he looked for Little Seamstress, but he could no longer find him, he said she might be in Hong Kong already where it was impossible to find her. Then Lou said to Ma that he knew Ma love Little Seamstress also. Ma, responded yes, but we love her in different ways.
Then the film ends with scene showing the interior of the house in that Village where the two boys used to live. Water started to sip in and the sewing machine was already immersed in water. As the whole house was filled with water another image overlapped that of the flooded house showing Lou reading a book to Little Seamstress who sat beside him with her dreamy eyes and Lou looking at her with the look of love while Ma, was on the side playing his violin.
Beautiful, just beautiful.
(Note: if you want to see more pictures some videos of the film [and see for yourself how cute they are] click here, the only problem with this site is - it's in french)
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