Movie Review
A Well-Tailored Tale: Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress
By Jan Aaron
That good literature has a significant impact on one’s
life is certainly the view held by educators throughout the
free world. So, this movie Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress,
set during China’s repressive Cultural Revolution, makes
us realize how fortunate we are to be able read books and learn
from them and how books can change lives. A movie you can recommend
to students, it can spark classroom discussions about how books
have changed their lives.
The film, which director Dai Sijie co-adapted with Nadine
Perront) from his autobiographical novel of the same name,
(a good read for high school age and above) follows the story
of four main characters, all involved in Mao Zedong’s
reeducation program. Under his rule in the 1970’s city
dwellers are forced to live in rural districts, shed their
bourgeois ideas, learn to live collectively and forget about
Balzac and Mozart
“To think this is the dump where we may spend the rest
of our lives,” says Ma (Ye Liu), a burgeoning violinist.
when he first sees the village, where no one has seen a book
or clock, and work is brutal. Here with his best friend Luo
(Kun Chen), who loves to read, they carrying slop in pails
and work in a dilapidated coal mine. The teenage boys soon
find ways to get around restrictions imposed by village chief,
(Shuangbao Wang). One way is to set their alarm clock ahead
by several hours so the leader thinks it’s quitting time.
When Ma plays Mozart on his violin, the chief demands to know
what it is he’s playing. “Mozart’s Thinking
About Chairman Mao,” he proclaims. As Ma performs, the
camera sweeps upward and the music lifts everyone.
Things change when the teens meet the pretty, illiterate granddaughter
of the Old Tailor in the next village, who they dub “The
Little Seamstress” (Xun Zhou). She loves stories, but
cannot read. Luo steals a trove of banned translated works
by Dumas, Balzac, Flaubert and other decadents, and the teens
read to her in secret, turning her onto to new worlds. There
other subplots. Both teen boys fall in love with the Little
Seamstress. In fact, the movie is about love—young love
and all its complications.
Shot in the Sichuan area of China, it’s a visual treat,
with panoramas, waterfalls, mists, and the lovely ceremony
of little candlelit paper boats honoring dead relatives. (Not
rated, 111 minutes, in Chinese with English subtitles.)#
