UNFORGETTABLE, THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS
DAI SIJIE
FRANCE

 

Romantic, intellectual, and nostalgic coalesce altogether to come up with this lovable story of two bourgeoisie city boys culturally re-educated in the mountains and have the three year experience resound from them on until they reach the present time with their own streak of successes Ma as a violin player in France and Luo as dentist in one of the most advanced hospital in China. Probably, the most colourful and significant three years in their life, Luo and Ma both fell and even continuously falling in love with, a woman they have only known as the Little Seamstress.

The opening scene of the film introduces us in a breathtaking panoramic landscape of Chinese mountains soothingly escorted by a traditional-sounding song allegorizing their great communist leader Mao Tse-Tung. West versus East, Capitalism versus Communism, Industrialized versus Traditional is the compelling force though not very consciously substantial in the film, provides the fundamental forces in this film. I am a fan of films who try to escalate or deescalate the point of experience of this hegemonic supremacy into the more human, hearty and personal familiarity of real people. The film right from the very beginning starts the tension, though peaceful, of the two entities that is believed to be asymmetrical. There are only two obvious results the premise of this film will be—either traditional will be the proclaimed soul-satisfying way of living than the modern capitalistic lives or the Western ideology winning over the ignorance of the very old life of the mountain people. I mentioned about the “not very consciously substantial” for the lop-sidedness of these two opposing forces, and that is because the characters in the film, Ma, Luo, and the Little Seamstress, don’t seem to have been directly affected by these hegemonies. The development in these characters though is very evident, vital, and even moving. The little seamstress moving to the city to find herself in the world of the advanced and the two re-educated city boys falling in love with her until more than 20 years only happened with the need of a cultural revolution for the Chinese population to submit to Communism with the apparent reason of Western destitution

 

Admirable is the film for its poetic, artistic, and comic treatment. “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”  is a celebration of many art forms—photography, music, poetry, and even being referential—films.  To watch this lovely film is to fall in love with art. With the authenticity of the oriental life, the western French wit, the merging creativity of the West and the East, and most impressively the universality of passion for art, the film becomes a love story whose physical and motivational background are as gigantic and as timeless as romance and ideology. 

The film is hugely entertaining. The ignorance of the villagers are not pathetically hilarious instead pure. Especially when the little seamstress is pointing out at the hen at the alarm clock of Ma and Luo and when a villager with his cow on their way home stopped to watch Ma playing the violin, they are sweet and purifying ignorance, not annoying and something that you would wish to keep. The adventures of the two city boys, something that you usually see with Hollywood teen flicks about college jocks and college cheerleaders, are also amusing. In the middle of the forest Ma and Luo, the peeping toms that they are over the so called “real paradise” where native girls take a good bath in the falls reminds you of old good movies that is not foolishly repeating or copying these movies but as it appears to me as something like a sonnet dedicated for these old good movies. This youthfulness even gets more brilliant and dynamic when they decide to steal the western or “forbidden” books that an about-to-graduate-re-educated they call ‘Four-Eyes’ for having eyeglasses owns and even when they create a book grotto, as a private place. The reparation of the chief’s tooth is also a lot of fun. The traditional operation of tooth repair is very interesting and unusual, and it is a genius to present this scene comically. Another awesome feature of the film is that it is well researched and the screenplay has provided the film an exquisite structure that merges tradition and the creation of these fictional characters harmoniously that not a single scene I believe is erroneously placed. The scenes where the boys are retelling the movies they have seen in the town cinema are so simply delighting and those scenes requires us to reminisce the days when movies are semi-god treated. A real celebration of art this film is with those few adorable scenes. Poetry has even extended this celebration when Ma has convinced the doctor to perform an abortion with Little Seamstress in exchange of a French novel. This film is a love story not of people; they are only carriers of the real entities who are constituted by many art forms.

The movie title is also fantastic. Titles are of great essence at least for me because they tell you about anything. Just like a name of a person is, a beautiful person deserves a beautiful name and a good film deserves a good title. “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” is the best choice for this sweeping epic romance. Balzac is actually the name of the western author to whom Little Seamstress learns that a woman’s beauty is priceless and emancipated her from the life she used to live to the life she only have known through the books read to her by the two city boys. The movie title represents the two forces, the two worlds I am presenting earlier, to which one leaves the other one and move to the other. The decision of Little Seamstress answers which among the two worlds win—and that is the West. Cured from her ignorance, by the two boys, only means the easy is cured by the west. This is subconsciously a capitalistic film though I would argue that I would like to think of this film as a film made for poetry, photography, music, movies, and most of all, for youthful memories, and the hegemonic battle of communism and capitalism is a distant body, like a moon, too foreign if you are not Neil Armstrong but more or less affected by it. Love is at the centre of the film though and I love this film for being as remote as possible but not so remote from this cold war. It is obvious in the film that capitalism wins over communism but that is just the truth in the real world and I even salute this film for being bittersweet in the last part. The scene where the mountains and the three main characters silhouettes are drowned by the waters are so nostalgic. I do not wish to end with who wins between communism and capitalism but instead I would love to close this review with what Balzac said—a woman’s beauty is priceless. Ma and Luo, many years ago spent the three years of their lives that they would like to experience over and over again. The setting, the beautiful mountains where they met Little Seamstress is about to get drowned because of a huge reservoir project of the Chinese government. Ma and Luo together reminisce the beauty of a priceless experience—of falling in love with Little Seamstress.