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| Words and ideas can change lives. Each time we open a book or watch a film, the stories have the power to alter us. So it is understandable that China has banned Sijie Dai’s semi-autobiographical book and film, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The story deals exactly with the way ideas can transform lives. |
BALZAC AND THE
LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS
Xiao cai feng (2002)
Film Review
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| —Overview
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| CREDITS |
| Release Date: July 29, 2005 (NY)
Studio: Empire Pictures
Director: Dai Sijie
Screenwriter: Dai Sijie, Nadine Perront
Starring: Xun Zhou, Kun Chen, Ye Liu, Shuangbao Wang, Zhijun Chung, Hongwei Wang, Xiong Xiao, Zuohui Tang, Wei Chen, Tianlu Chen, Qing-yun Fan
Genre: Drama, Foreign, Romance
Official Website: EmpirePictures.com
MPAA Rating: Not Available
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG |
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| SYNOPSIS |
 Based on the international best-seller, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is set in the early 1970's during the later stages of China's "Cultural Revolution," as two city-bred teenage best friends, Luo (Kun Chen) and Ma (Ye Liu), are sent to a backward mountainous region for Maoist re-education. Sons of "reactionary intellectuals," the boys are required to perform arduous manual labor along with locals while under the supervision of the zealous village headman.
Still they manage to find diversions. They save Ma's violin from destruction by claiming a Mozart lieder is actually a celebration of Chairman Mao. Because of their literacy, the headman sends them to a larger town to watch imported Albanian and North Korean communist melodramas, and then report back to the culture-starved locals. They embroider the stodgy plots with their own inventions and the villagers are entranced. During one of these trips, the two see and fall in love with the local beauty (Xun Zhou), the daughter of the most renowned tailor in the region. They never know her name, referring to her only as "the Little Seamstress," but she captivates them with her innocence and sensuality. When they discover a hidden suitcase filled with banned books by Western writers, mostly French — Flaubert, Dumas and Balzac among them – they read these works to the Little Seamstress for hours on end in a secret meeting place. Thirsting for knowledge of the world beyond, she comes to love, in particular, Balzac and his characters. Eventually, Luo and the seamstress become lovers, but their romance comes to an abrupt end when he is recalled home and she finds herself pregnant. Changed by her "sentimental education," the Little Seamstress ultimately finds the courage to leave her village for wider horizons. In a bittersweet coda, many years later Luo and Ma, beneficiaries of China's economic gains and enjoying considerable professional success, meet and wonder about the Little Seamstress. |
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 Words and ideas can change lives. Each time we open a book or watch a film, the stories have the power to alter us. So it is understandable that China has banned Sijie Dai’s semi-autobiographical book and film, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The story deals exactly with the way ideas can transform lives.
The story tells of Luo and Ma, two young men from middle class families in Beijing who are sent to a distant rural village during the Cultural Revolution for reeducation. There they work in the fields and mines. They also have to submit to the rule of the town chief whose job it is to teach them that their bourgeois lifestyle was inappropriate for China under Mao. When they first get to the village, they have to have all their belongings judged for their appropriateness. They have a cookbook that is trashed (the village didn’t need bourgeois chicken). Luo’s alarm clock survived (it’s the first the villagers have seen), as does Ma’s violin after Luo tell the chief that Ma plays “Mozart is Thinking About Chairman Mao” so beautifully.
 In time, they steal a set of forbidden books from another youth being reeducated in the village. These books (translations of classic Western literature) become their world. They pour through the stories.
They also meet the granddaughter of the tailor in a nearby village and both fall in love with her. The two city boys take it upon themselves to educate her so she won’t be like the country people they loathe being with. They read her the books. Those books do far more to teach her about the world and herself than all the other things they teach her. In time, she is set free from the restraints of her society through the stories that she has heard. In setting her free, it also takes her away from both Luo and Ma. Their attempt to make her “worthy” of them comes back in their face.
Perhaps it might be appropriate at this point for us to consider the words and ideas that have changed each of us. Our lists will vary. What are yours? John Steinbeck? C. S. Lewis? Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Bono? Bob Dylan? e. e. cummings? Martin Scorsese? Lars von Trier? The Gospel?
In The Gospel According to John, Jesus is called “the Logos.” Often translated “word,” logos is the root from which we get the word logic. Christ is seen in John as the kind of word or idea that changes not only lives, but the world.
 Of course the whole Cultural Revolution was designed to remove ideas and words from society to allow Maoist ideas to be inculcated without competing concepts. The Communists knew that words mattered, so they sought to eliminated words and ideas that would undermine their own ideas. But as is often the case, those words and ideas continue to find their way into people’s minds. It isn’t easy to stop words from creeping in.
As I said, even though China allowed the film to be shot there, the film and the book it’s based on are banned. But I understand that the extensive bootleg video industry in China has copies of the film circulating. It really is hard to stop words from creeping in – into a country or into our lives.
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Empire Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
No other uses are permitted without the prior written consent of owner. Use of the material in violation of the foregoing may result in civil and/or criminal penalties. Credits and dates are subject to change. For more information, please visit their official site.
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