In 1971, when the Cultural Revolution was in full swing, two teenagers in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise) are sentenced to reeducation for four years in Mount Phoenix, a remote area in Sichuan of breathtaking beauty, because of the "bourgeois crimes" of their fathers. Luo (played by Kun Chen) is a dentist's son, Ma (played by Ye Liu) a budding musician. They are now required to carry human waste as a crop fertilizer, to work in filthy copper mines, to translate approved foreign films for the locals, to tow the party line of Chairman Mao, and to pretend that they are not bored with the simple life among illiterate peasants. At the top of the social hierarchy are the local party official as well as the tailor; all others are considered revolutionary peasants. The two handsome city boys attract the tailor's daughter (played by Xun Zhou), the local seamstress, to whom they read from a chest of forbidden literary works found in the hut of another city boy undergoing reeducation. They are not physically strong, often spilling watery fecal material on themselves while climbing uphill to the fields, yet they persist, even learning how to sew from the tailor. On one occasion, Ma contracts malaria, which is eradicated by whipping his back with switches made from branches of a herbal bush; during the ordeal, he remains silent. Meanwhile, the seamstress falls in love with Luo, has a child and then an abortion, and at the end of the film walks away to live in the nearest town, saying that what motivates her to leave are the words of Balzac, which tell her that "A woman's beauty is a priceless treasure" and otherwise speak of a world beyond her home. The scene then shifts to the present. Luo and Ma are now successful, the former as a dentist, the latter as a musician. On television, they see that Mount Phoenix's beautiful scenery is flooded for the Three Gorges Dam, displacing 2 million to provide electricity for 200 million. Based on director Dai Sijie's semiautobiographical novel, the film imparts some nostalgia for the era when China was nearly a classless society as well as regrets that the quest for prosperity is tearing apart the landscape and reestablishing a class society, yet the film is banned in China because authorities cannot believe that foreign novels might inspire Chinese to change their lives. MH
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