17 August 2014

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (China/France, 2002)

In 1971 China, in the lingering grip of the cultural revolution, two university students, Luo and Ma, are sent to a mountain mining village as part of their reeducation duty to purge them of their classical western oriented education. Amid the backbreaking work and stifling ignorance of the community, the two boys find that music, and the presence of the beautiful local young women are the only pleasant things in their miserable life. However, none compare to the young seamstress granddaughter of the local tailor.

Here's a winner. Balzac is based on a novel by Dai Sijie, and when the time came for a movie version, Dai himself chose to be the director. That was a great move, because Balzac turned out to be a beautiful and poetically stunning piece of cinema. There are many shots that looks amazing, especially those that incorporate the view from the small village and around it. Acting-wise it's nothing short of fantastic, the casting is flawless and at the end it's easy to get sentimental about the time spent with these characters in their youth. 

          
Genre: Drama/Biography/Romance

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