Xiao cai feng

Plot synopsis:
The film is set in a period between 1971 and 1974, during the later stage of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Two city boys in their late teenage years, Luo Min (played by Chen Kun) and Ma Jianling (Liu Ye), are on their way to a remote village in the mountainous Sichuan province for re-education. Upon arrival, the boys are questioned on their "reactionary backgrounds" by the Chief (Chen Tianlu), the village leader, in the presence of the other villagers. Luo's father turns out to be a dentist who had once fitted a false tooth for Chiang Kai-shek, while Ma's father is a doctor. The Chief also examines the boys' luggage and burns a cookbook, which he claims to be bourgeois. He is about to throw Ma's violin into the fire as well before he is stopped by Luo, who lies that the Mozart's Divertimento KV 334 Ma plays is a "mountain song" titled Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao.
The two boys are allocated a house and immediately join in the labours of the locals, which include transporting buckets of human waste used for fertilizer as well as working in the coal mine. One day, a young girl, granddaughter of a tailor from the neighbouring village and known to everyone as the Little Seamstress (Zhou Xun), comes by with her grandfather to listen to Ma play violin. Luo and Ma befriend the Little Seamstress and soon both fall in love with her. The girl, illiterate but hungry for knowledge, and the boys, vowing to transform her, devise a plan to steal a suitcase filled with banned translated Western novels from Four-Eyes (Wang Hongwei), another boy undergoing re-education in the village but bound to return to the city. Luo begins to read to the Little Seamstress every day, books including those by Stendhal, Kipling and Dostoevsky. But her favourite turns out to be Balzac.
The Little Seamstress soon falls in love with Luo. One day, as Luo is departing for the city on a two-month leave to visit his sick father, she tells him that she has a problem but does not elaborate. She later confides to Ma that she is pregnant, but population-curbing laws forbid marriage before 25 and abortion is illegal without a marriage certificate. Ma travels to the city to find a gynecologist who knows his father and begs the latter for help. The gynecologist is moved and agrees to travel to the village to perform a secret abortion. Upon Luo's return, life resumes as before.
One day, however, the Little Seamstress, now completely changed by the new ideas Luo and Ma have introduced her to, abruptly decides to leave the village to seek out "a new life," despite pleas from her grandfather and Luo. Later, in 1974, Luo and Ma both return to the city as well. Luo later becomes a professor in a dental institute in Shanghai, while Ma moves to France and becomes a professional violinist. In the late 1990s, when he sees on the news that the construction of the Three Gorges Dam will soon flood the village he spent three years in, Ma travels back in the hope of finding the Little Seamstress again. However, his efforts are futile and he brings back only a video recording of the village and the people, including the now aged Chief. As Ma meets up with his old friend Luo in Shanghai, the latter confesses an earlier failed attempt to search for the Little Seamstress in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The film ends with a news clip of the flooded towns and villages and a scene of the three, back to their youth years, also submerged in water.

Tags: romantic, autobiographical, flashback

Review:
Despite this, there is something innately satisfying about watching it, which defies casual analysis.The story centres on two young men, Ma and Luo. Coming from "reactionary bourgeois" families in the city, they are sent by the Chinese authorities for "re-education" to a beautiful yet achingly backward and isolated community in the mountains.
There they undertake menial work, live in comparative squalor, but predictably find love in the form of the same woman  known throughout the film simply as "the little seamstress".While "Balzac" will win few originality awards, its strength lies in execution.Sijie Dai manages to tell his story (which is semi-autobiographical) in a straightforward way.
The local party chief exclaims early in the film "revolutionary peasants will never be corrupted by filthy bourgeois chicken"; Ma and Luo are sent to the cinema with instructions to tell the story to the village on their return; the little seamstress comments wistfully that she can "see planes flying overhead, and wonder to what far cities they are going" reminding us painfully that this is the 1960s not the 1860s.Mostly, though, the audience is reminded of the futility of repression; the insatiable thirst for knowledge and new ideas, even among the villagers who are transfixed by the basic choices to be found in a city-boy's cookbook.The cinematography is also wonderful.
In 1971, in the China of Mao Tse Tung, the two university students Luo (Kun Chen) and Ma (Ye Liu) are sent to a mountain mining village with very ignorant peasants and also a Maoist rehabilitation camp, to be reeducated.
They become friends, and Luo and Ma steal forbidden books of western literature, and while they read the books and teach the little seamstress, they also tell the story to the community and play classical music in the violin, developing and improving their lives.What a magnificent and beautiful movie is "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress".
In a wonderful landscape with stunning scenery, this revolutionary love story about the importance of books to improve the life of people is very believable and I am not sure whether it is based on a true story.
Sijie Dai's wonderful novel, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" was a joy to read.
The author, who one thinks must live in France, made it possible for people that haven't read the book to see it as a motion picture that captures the spirit of the novel.The action takes place in the China of the Red Brigades.
Among the people that fell prey to the hysteria of those days, two young city young men were apprehended and sent to a remote area by the magical Phoenix mountains to start work in one of the mines in the area as part of their reeducation, or brain washing process.Young Luo and Ma, can't do without their beloved books and the violin that one of them played.
Thus begins a series of readings from the classical books, mostly French, and the young men disguise as coming from another source.When the tailor for the area arrives with his little assistant, both Luo and Ma can't help in falling in love for her.
I was lost in the film,as was the rest of the audience(including the cute girl) This film took a wide eyed,but intelligent swipe at the upside down vision of Mao's Cultural Revolution,and asked us"What if?" The simple,humorous story,and the lead characters drew that whole audience in,and reminded me of why I like the movies.
I like a good heavy drama as much as anyone,but as I sat there in the dark packed house that night flying over the most beautiful lush Chinese landscapes,and really being involved in the three characters plights,amid tears and sniffles scattered throughout the theatre(i got choked up a bit too) I realized that sometimes less is more in filmmaking,and it can mean the difference between connecting with the story and characters,and just being along for the ride du jour.
The underwater scene at the end, while having a melancholic touch, did come across as rather forced for an otherwise "natural" film.The characters are all believable, amicable, intriguing and make you all the more interested in the story, which takes place during the Chinese cultural revolution.
you could fall in love with The little seamstress just the way to protagonist and Luo do.the scenery is perfect, and makes you wish to be re-educated, although...
I was really moved by the portrayal of the friendship of the Little Seamstress, Ma, and Luo, and how their lives were changed by their experience in the mountains in this brief span of time.
The mountains were beautiful, the re-educators were not presented as monsters, and the acting, esp Xun Zho as Little Seamstress and Ye Liu as Ma was really good.
Most importantly, I rediscovered how lucky I am to be able to read and watch what I want when I want, and how I am almost obligated to take advantage of my freedom to read and watch movies.For me, the filming was never as strong as the better Asian movies but once the movie got going the filming became stronger as did the movie.The character of the harshness of the cultural revolution in China in the 60's was shown thru a politically soft-focus lens, but I did not mind this as there are more than enough Chinese movies that have leaned in the other direction, and for me, this was a movie about friendship and love in a political and cultural setting, not the other way around which matches my own personal preferences..
"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Xiao cai feng)" raises the awkward situation of commenting on a semi-autobiographical story which was originally written, then adapted and directed by the person who lived it in the same, beautiful locations where the events that inspired Sijie Dai took place.
The basics of the story would seem like a 1940's sci fi allegory of a totalitarian, anti-intellectual society if the Cultural Revolution under the here ubiquitously revered ruler Mao Tse Tung hadn't actually happened, with its anti-literate class-based revenge of kicking the children of the perceived elite out of the cities to rural areas for re-education at rigorous manual labor.
In outline, his story is like a real life "Fahrenheit 451" and "the Little Seamstress," the teen ager, played charmingly by Xun Zhou, who gets caught up in a triangle between the out-of-towners, like "Ninotchka." She, startlingly, has far more ambition than the loyal peasant girl in "The Road Home."So it's hard to tell if the strong condescension in the tone to the local peasantry is what the two young men finally learn to overcome or is somewhat shown to be just as endemic in the Communist Party as is seen at the end they were suppressing the beauty of local traditions almost as much as intellectual influences.
Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress is one of those movies, you're glad you caught at your local cinema, even though you never originally planned to see it.
Boys lose girl.Whoever said "No girl was ever spoiled by reading a book"?"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is supposed to be an ode to the transforming power of music and literature, beauty and love.
"Balzac and the little seamstress" is French made film which portrays the profound impact that illicit French literature has on a peasant Chinese village during the cultural revolution.
This Chinese movie, set in 1971, is about two university students that in the middle of the Cultural revolution, are sent to a mountain village for reeducation, in order to "learn from the peasants".
Amid the menial work they are forced to do and the stifling stupidity of the villagers, the pair manages some solace by seducing the young seamstress granddaughter of a local tailor, when they introduce her to a secret cache of forbidden books (including a tome by Honore de Balzac referred in the movie's title).
Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise (2002)(shown in the U.S. as     "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is a movie that is pleasant to watch, but that doesn't provide much to think about later.
They also manage to find books of translations of great literature--including Balzac.A young woman is added to the equation--the Little Seamstress of the title.
At the very end of the film, we are brought into present-day China, so that we learn the fate of the characters we see as young people.
(Other people attending the movie had read the book, and told us that this ending was tacked onto the film, which lessened the emotional impact.)In any event, I enjoyed this movie, and learned something more about history and also the social structure of China.
At the core of 2003's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a film directed by a man adapting his own novel, is a bond shared between two men at a time of oppression and punishment - something which is threatened into disintegration on account of a young woman seemingly coming between them.
As he looks on, there is a looming sense of whatever little fondness the film infers he has for her is clashing with the fact she is coming between him and his friend; in spite of the fact the film is somewhat of a love story, this sense of men and males bonding in harsh circumstances takes centre stage - Dai Sijie's film deceptively about the fondness two people share for a member of the opposite sex and more-so about the understanding two of the same gender have with one another; those around them and their predicament.If one were to say that the sorts of films Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress feigns to be more often than not end with a heterosexual embrace, the final few scenes of this film display a muted mutual understanding of what two people of the same gender went through: thinking along the lines of 'we experienced all of that, lost it, but still have each other'.
Such a man is Luo (Chen), a young adult suffering through the same hardships with a good friend named Ma (Liu), of whom is a bit of a musician.From robotic foundations comes the film about characters exploring books and music and other texts at the higher end of culture; items which touch the characters so much that they decide to print verses from their favourite banned material on their shirts so they may feel how they feel.
There in the mountains, they meet an attractive Chinese little seamstress who they read books too like Balzac and others that are normally forbidden.
They become friends with a local girl, a seamstress whose true name they never learn, and the three begin a covert reading group of forbidden foreign novels.First of all, BALZAC and the LITTLE Chinese SEAMSTRESS is just a very moving, engaging, and intelligent story.
The two young men Luo and Ma become acquainted with the local girls, especially the Little Seamstress (her actual name is not given), who lives with her grandfather.
The two young men steal foreign books from someone named "Four Eyes" and they try to teach the little seamstress to read.
You just look at the company and console yourself with the awards you have already won.This was a beautiful film with Xun Zhou (The Emperor and the Assassin) in the title role as an uneducated villager who is exposed to banned books by two university students, Kun Chen and Ye Liu (The Promise, The Curse of the Golden Flower), who were sent to her mountain for reeducation.Besides another critical look at the reeducation program under Mao, it also provides a look at how all yearn for freedom, much like watching the second hour of the new John Adams mini-series did.One thing that was very interesting in the film was the way it demonstrated the flooding of the Yangtze to create the 650 square mile lake in China.
Sijie Dai's semi autobiographical novel BALZAC AND THE LITTLE Chinese SEAMSTRESS is one of those little miracles of a film that lingers in the mind and heart long after the credits are over.
Sijie Dai wrote the screenplay, cast the film and directed his story about the changes that occurred in Communist China in such a way that the full spectrum of 'revolution' is appreciated without polarizing the audience.The time is 1971 and the city bourgeois children are sent to the rural areas for re-education in to the mindset of Socialism and the glory of Chairman Mao. Among these are two young boys - Luo (Kun Chen), son of a dentist and a scholar who loves to read, and Ma (Ye Liu) who also loves learning and is an able violinist.
The boys adjust to the rigors of hard labor, mix with the rural folk and the other boys being reeducated - Four Eyes (Hong Wei Wang) secretly hides classic books and is befriended by the boys - as well as the venerated Old Tailor (Zhijun Cong) and his delightful granddaughter Little Chinese Seamstress (Xun Zhou).
Luo falls in love with the Little Chinese Seamstress (and so does Ma) and the three experience the beauty of nature and music and literature until circumstances force their separation.
Few of us understand the changes in philosophy that accompanied the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution and this story and film offer an enchanting view of how the human spirit can survive almost any obstacle when it is married to friends, to literature and to music.
A charming teenager love story in China during time of Cultural Revolution..
In China, in times of Mao Tse Tung cultural revolution, two young university students, Luo and Ma are sent in a retired mountain village to be rehabilitated et purged of their old western education.
A love story rapidly develops between Luo and the young seamstress at the same time they read together forbidden books such as works of Honore de Balzac that they have stolen to another student under Maoist rehabilitation.
The young Xou Zhou is fantastic as the seamstress that sees her life change after the two boys come from the big city to live near her village.
The story of the two boys and the little seamstress was simple, there was no dramatic love struggles, like so many of the mainstream movies.
Chen Kun (Luo) and Zhou Xun (the little seamstress) mastered a totally different accent of the same language, thus adding authenticity to the movie.
Both fall in love with a seamstress in the village to whom they read forbidden books to in stolen moments.
The boys steal it, and with the help of their favourite author, Balzac, the little Chinese seamstress is changed forever from the simple girl she was.The movie itself leaves something to be desired.
People would have to read the book before seeing the movie to work out which parts fitted where and what was happening.
When he is reminiscing about how the little seamstress had left a while earlier (from what can be pieced together) it is very confusing trying to work out whether he is in the present or the past.The director of the movie (Sijie Dai) is also the writer of the book, so a better movie would be expected then this.
I think another commentator made the point that the film doesn't deliver the levels of triumph, nor tragedy, so deserved for a such a portrayal of love, and freedom, amid such life-altering times, as that of Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1970's China.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, France's nominee for Best Foreign Film at this year's Golden Globe Awards, is about re-education and is based on the experience of the director Dai Sijie who spent four years of his life in a similar program.
They steal "subversive" novels of Honore de Balzac, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Gogol from a student named Four-Eyes and read them to the granddaughter of the local tailor, known only as the Little Chinese Seamstress (Xun Zhou,).
Talk about a Cultural Revolution.While the acting is strong, Xun Zhou looks more like a model from a Beijing studio than a naïve mountain seamstress and the boys seem more like symbols of the power of art than real people undergoing a difficult and painful experience.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress wants to tell an important story, but comes across as a bit too precious, trivializing its material in a sentimental tone poem that ultimately fails to satisfy.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie DaiThe film was a very affectionate story right in between important events and right at the very end where it showed an important past of Luo(Kun Chen), Ma(Ye Liu), and The little seamstress(Xun Zhou) in the shed where they were re-educated and where Luo and Ma first feel in love with the Little Seamstress.
I always thought that something would happen between Ma(Ye Liu) and Luo(Kun Chen) over the Little Seamstress(Xun Zhou) because Ma was always down about seeing Luo with The Seamstress, and i thought his jealousy would get in the way later on."Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is a passionate film that idealizes two guys who are in love with one girl and shows how determined the two guys were in trying to change the girl.
Luo and Ma both try to find a way to reform the Little Seamstress by using forbidden books.
It somewhat showed how Ye Liu's character is and how it might shape him in the future in the film as Ma. One element of the film i really didn't like was when Kun Chen's character Luo wanted to change the Little Seamstress so that she would match up to him.
Luo was a bit selfish but when it happened Luo fell in love with her anyways.The film was directed by Sijie Dai, who used the books and Concepts of Balzac, who is an author and introduces the New form of the Little Seamstress as time went by.
The movie failed to depict closely to the book.Luo and ma was sent to work in the Pheonix Mountains during the Cultural Revolution in China.