BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS
By no means small
By Lin Murray
Posted Tue, 25 Mar 2003

What a treat it is to sit in a darkened cinema and be transported into another world — a world of which you have no concept, a world that fills you with fear and repulsion and delight at the very same time.

'Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress' is a little gem of a movie — and I say little, because the film is subtle and tender and devoid of Hollywood tricks, but it is in no way small. On the contrary, the film — based on the eponymous novel by Daj Sijie, who also directs — deals with big issues: culture, politics, class, education, progression, displacement, desire, growing-up and loss. What makes it unique, though, is that the movie is set against the backdrop of the "dark years" of Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 1970s and it offers viewers a poignant glimpse of rural China at that time.

The movie starts with a group of men climbing up a long stretch of stairs high into the mountainside, surrounded by the most achingly beautiful scenery imaginable. Accompanying them, and sifting through the impressive rock face is the lilting sound of children's voices singing Mao's revolutionary songs. Best friends Ma (Liu Ye) and Luo (Chen Kun), accused of being "bourgeois intellectuals" and therefore "enemies of the people", are being sent to the small mountain town 'Phoenix of the Sky' to be "re-educated" by peasants.

At a time when most literature is banned, the single book the teenagers bring to the village is a cookbook, which the illiterate village chief immediately throws into the fire for being "bourgeois material". The only way that the two can save Ma's violin from following the same route is by playing Mozart to the villagers, and convincing the chief that Mozart was "thinking of Mao" when he wrote the piece. The backward villagers are entranced by the exquisite music and the pair quickly learn to use it to their advantage.

Although life in the village is dreary and the hard manual labour takes its toll on Ma and Luo, they soon discover two very important distractions: the beautiful seamstress granddaughter (Zhou Xun) of a local tailor and a suitcase filled with forbidden foreign books. Inevitably they fall in love — both with the girl and with the literature. But while this becomes the boys' means of escape, neither suspects the irrevocable change that the literature will have on the Little Seamstress.

Love, music and inspiring literature — what better means with which to elevate the human spirit than these? The movie deals with each simply, but the wonder that all three elements create — within Luo, Ma and the Little Seamstress, the rest of the village, and ultimately, I think, the viewer — is what makes it so lyrically meaningful. If nothing else, however, the scenery itself is enough to break your heart and put it back together at the very same time.

Something else worth mentioning is that the movie also makes a potent comment on the effect that the flooding of the Yangstze River Valley — due to the building of the Three Gorges Dam, set to be completed in 2009 — is having on thousands of people's lives. The dam is expected to raise the water level by almost 600 feet, which means hundreds of towns and villages within the valley will become submerged. While critics from around the world have protested against the dam's construction for environmental and historical reasons, the movie's ending makes the most damning statement of all.

Nevertheless, I felt as though I was placed under a breathtaking spell while watching 'The Little Seamstress' and it was easy to forgive its various faults (It was about half-an-hour too long and the filming was often out of focus). The film is a chance to see a side of China that we often do not get to see — and certainly will never get to see again once the flooding is completed — and I urge movie-goers who like to go to the cinema to learn something new, to see it.

What the international critics are saying:

"A poignant lyricism runs through Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress that transforms this story about love and culture into a cinematic poem."
- Kirk Honeycutt, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Beautifully shot, delicately scored and powered by a set of heartfelt performances, it's a lyrical endeavour."
- Chris Wiegand, BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE

"A transporting story about storytelling."
- Liz Braun, JAM! MOVIES

"A delightful fable about the enduring value of literature."
- Susan Walker, TORONTO STAR

"An effective, enjoyable film and an interesting argument for the Open Society."
- El Topo, IOFILM.CO.UK