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Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress [DVD] [2003]
 
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Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress [DVD] [2003]

DVD ~ Xun Zhou
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
RRP: £19.99
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Product details

  • Actors: Xun Zhou, Kun Chen, Ye Liu, Shuangbao Wang, Zhijun Cong
  • Directors: Sijie Dai
  • Writers: Sijie Dai, Nadine Perront
  • Producers: Bernard Lorain, Lise Fayolle, Pujian Wang, Wang Zhebin
  • Format: PAL
  • Language Mandarin Chinese
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 12
  • Studio: Optimum Home Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: 26 April 2004
  • Run Time: 110 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B0000D9Y4Y
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 5,061 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

    Popular in this category:

    #26 in  DVD > DVD Bargains > World Cinema Savings - Up to 70% Off

Reviews

Synopsis

The story of two young men, Ma and Luo, from the city who, during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, are sent to a isolated mountain village to be re-educated in Maoist teachings. They discover a cache of forbidden foreign books by writers such as Dumas and Flaubert and read them to the local seamstress, with whom they have fallen in love. Based on an international best-selling novel, this adaptation stars Zhou Xun (BEIJING BICYCLE) as the seamstress.

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, 5 Dec 2003
By Robert Harkins (Harrogate, North Yorkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Starring: Liu Ye, Chen Kun and Zhou Xhun

1971 and the Cultural Revolution is raging in China. Two sons of enemies of the people Ma (Ye) and Luo (Kun) are sent off to the countryside for re-education. Ma's father, a dentist, gave that reactionary running dog Chaing Kai Shek a filling in 1947. The boys are sent to the heart of Northern China's Phoenix Mountains to live and work. Scenery. The opening shot when they are trudging up the mountainside is spectacular.

The boys meet the Chief and the whole village crowds round? Not much entertainment in the mountains. The Chief rummages through their luggage and finds a violin. He is about to throw it on the fire as a bourgeois toy when Ma explains that it's a musical instrument. The Chief asks for music. Luo gives him a Mozart sonata. The Chief is underwhelmed. It's Mozart thinking about Chairman Mao the bold Ma says. Smiles. Happiness. Congratulations. No burnt violin.

So they settle into a life of drudgery. Lugging barrels of manure up the mountains. Digging for copper in a primitive mine. Boredom. Misery. Hard work. Then one day the Tailor breezes into town. A venerable old gentleman with a sewing machine. He brings his grand-daughter the Little Seamstress in person. Beautiful. Lively. Funny. Can't read.

The boys take it upon themselves to teach her to read and write. In doing so of course they'll get to know her better, or even better, intimately. The Seamstress tells them of a youth in the next village, the finely named Four-Eyes, who has a suitcase of forbidden foreign books. These turn out to be 19th century French classics by Balzac, Dumas, Stendhal.

So they start reading the books to the Seamstress. The Tailor is no mug though and suspects the boys are up to no good. He moves into their hut and becomes beguiled by the Count of Monte Christo. The Chief finds out. The Chief threatens to turn them in. The Chief has toothache. Oh Dear. Learn how to make your own sewing machine powered dentist's drill!

Verdict: Wonderful. The story is based on the experiences of Dai Sijiie who was re-educated himself in the seventies. If you can't see the DVD buy the book. Now available at all good bookshops!

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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars "Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao.", 23 Feb 2006
By M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Set against the startling backdrop of China's mountainous regions, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress takes place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where the government was intent on reeducating those intellectuals, artists and political dissenters.Filmmaker Dai Sijie has created a dreamy memory of hardship and adversity - part familiar Chinese parable, part familiar French romance - in which love of the radiantly beautiful, remote Chinese landscape outlasts bitterness at the Mao era's blinkered commitment to intellectual ignorance.

Two teenage friends, Ma and Luo (the attractive Ye Liu and Kun Chen), toil away in a mountain village, children of disgraced intellectuals. As part of their reeducation, they lug human waste up a mountaintop, push rocks in a mine, and occasionally visit a nearby town to watch North Korean films, which they then act out for their less mobile comrades.

Life for them is pretty boring, and they soon tire of the work, but they're smart enough to know that the whole thing is somewhat farcical, but also smart enough to go along with the program. A new world opens up for them when they discover that another young man sent for re-education has a stash of forbidden books – mostly 19th-century European and Russian novels – hidden in his hut.

They also two fall in love with a young girl (Xun Zhou) from a neighboring village and woo her by reading to her from the forbidden books. The young seamstress shows an instant affinity to Balzac in particular, and as Ma reads her the stories from the 19th century, the girl. the most appealing aspect of the movie is the romantic notion that books can change lives. Luo and Ma's interest seems as much the result of intellectual curiosity as it is an appreciation of Balzac's storytelling abilities. They're also impressed that the books deal with more or less ordinary people, unlike the royal personages that dominate classical Chinese literature. For them, this is a revelation.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a big, sweeping and grandly photographed film, but the narrative tends to wander, and oftentimes the movie lacks the dramatic heft to make it really compelling entertainment. Based in the book of the same name, the movie also lacks the subtleness of its source material, with Sijie transforming the book's brief time frame, tweaking countless plot points, and topping it all off with a titanic metaphor not found in his own pages.

The strength of the film is in the quieter scenes when the trio wonder what life is like outside. There's the thrill at the breathy inspiration found in their contraband Balzac and a moment of wonder when the Seamstress talks about seeing airplanes pass overhead and wonders "what the world is like elsewhere." Mike Leonard February 06.

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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Love and forbidden culture in 1970s China, 23 Jan 2006
By pointone (Bournemouth UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This fascinating film is based on the book written by the director Sijie Dai about his personal experiences when re-educated in Chairman Mao’s China in the 1970s.

It is shot in the beautiful Phoenix Mountains in Northern China and relates the experiences of two educated eighteen year olds Luo (Kun Chen) and Ma (Ye Liu) thrust into an isolated illiterate peasant community and both falling in love with the tailors daughter “Little Chinese Seamstress” sensitively acted by Xun Zhou.

This political re-education does not entail incarceration so the boys are free to move around, and this enables an exploration of how reading and education and the ideas learned from books improve the human condition.

The boys steal a suitcase of books (according to the Director in the interview nearly everyone in Chine at the time (including himself) stole forbidden books. Balzac is important to the Little Seamstress as she learns the role of women in western society, and the power beauty can give them. The chemistry between the two educated boys and the illiterate girl they educate is superbly enacted.

The drama unfolds at exactly the right pace shot in fine photography amidst glorious natural beauty. A great Chinese movie.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars It is a lovely, heartwarming movie about hard times in Mao's China.
The consequences of Mao's ideas on students and higher education is shown in this heartwarming film, where a treasure trunk of books becomes the bright light for a few youngsters... Read more
Published 3 days ago by Isabella Balkert

4.0 out of 5 stars Read!
A gem of a movie! It underlines the importance of reading and the power of the human imagination. At one point in the movie, after one of the re-educated boys has read a novel by... Read more
Published 9 months ago by H. Graham

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but controversial
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... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Andres C. Salama

3.0 out of 5 stars A slice of life in Maoist China
"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is an interesting film set amidst some beautiful mountain scenery in China. Read more
Published 21 months ago by L. Davidson

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