Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress/Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse Chinoise (2002) - Sijie's sensual, resonant ode to youth and everything laid to waste by Communist China

6/21/2020

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress/Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse Chinoise (2002) - Sijie's sensual, resonant ode to youth and everything laid to waste by Communist China

♥♥♥♥♥

The softly contoured young stars lie closely together with a book on this intriguing poster for Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

On an ordered three year re-education stay in a remote Chinese village during chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, two young men steal literature and inaugurate a young local seamstress in its forbidden blessings.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is written and directed by great Chinese filmmaker Dai Sijie (Niu-Peng (1989)), adapting his own same-titled, semi-autobiographical 2000 novel, with Nadine Perront (The Chinese Botanist's Daughters (2006)) contributing writing.
Here is a gorgeously photographed (by Jean-Marie Dreujou (Wolf Totem (2015))) political romance drama with a sensually impressionistic nature. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is deeply compelling and moving, showing us new particulars of the horrors of Mao's Communist regime with great authority.
The film has great performances; not least Xun Zhou (The Silent War (2012)) is fabulous. The score by Pujian Wang is beautiful. The protagonist's swimming around in the ending doesn't come off entirely natural.
But the Chinese government's flooding of the paradisiacal area shown in the film is as unbelievable as it is unbearable. It concludes a film that is rare in its successful mix of being funny, intelligent, deep and extremely poignant.

Sijie gives a 12-minute interview in French in this video

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 5.2 mil. $
= Uncertain
[Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress premiered 16 May (Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard section) and runs 111 minutes. 11 production companies and governmental support bodies were involved with financing and making the film. Shooting took place from ? - May 2001 in Paris, France and in China, including Shanghai. The necessary permission to film in China took 7 months to procure and only came with the simultaneous understanding that the film would be banned from getting screened in China. The film did not get a general release in the US until 2005, and only in New York: It opened #67 to a 16k $ first weekend in 1 theater, peaking at #49 and in 22 theaters (different weeks), grossing 666k $ (12.8 % of the total gross). The film's 3 biggest markets were Germany with 1.1 mil. $ (21.2 %), North America and France with 662k $ (12.7 %). The film was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, translating to two notches lower than this one. Sijie returned with The Chinese Botanist's Daughters (2006). Zhou returned in Where Have All the Flowers Gone/Na shi hua kai (2002). Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is certified fresh at 77 % with a 6.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (15-24)

6/21/2020

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress/Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse Chinoise (2002) - Sijie's sensual, resonant ode to youth and everything laid to waste by Communist China

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