What are you supposed to do when you film goes up against others in the Golden Globes like eventual Oscar winner Talk to Her, or The Crime of Father Amaro, or Hero? You just look at the company and console yourself with the awards you have already won.This was a beautiful film with Xun Zhou (The Emperor and the Assassin) in the title role as an uneducated villager who is exposed to banned books by two university students, Kun Chen and Ye Liu (The Promise, The Curse of the Golden Flower), who were sent to her mountain for reeducation.Besides another critical look at the reeducation program under Mao, it also provides a look at how all yearn for freedom, much like watching the second hour of the new John Adams mini-series did.One thing that was very interesting in the film was the way it demonstrated the flooding of the Yangtze to create the 650 square mile lake in China. Until this film, I had no good idea of just how great a project that was. When you see these villagers trek up many many steps to get to their homes high in the mountains, and then see those same home flooded, you begin to comprehend just how big a project that was.This was a beautiful symphony with Mozart and Balzac transforming the people.

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 from the peasants". Amid the menial work they are forced to do and the stifling stupidity of the villagers, the pair manages some solace by seducing the young seamstress granddaughter of a local tailor, when they introduce her to a secret cache of forbidden books (including a tome by Honore de Balzac referred in the movie's title). The movie is interesting to watch, yet a bit ugly in its contempt for peasants, who are seen as ugly brutes, basically. This sort of ugly snobbery makes one almost think that maybe Mao had a few points in sending the haughty intellectuals to the countryside for reeducation (of course, in real life, reeducation during the cultural revolution was a much more brutal affair than it is shown here).

We showed this film to an audience of 30 at our Community Cinema here in Shrsophire, and were astonished at its wholehearted power and pleasure. The average rating was just over 9.**** spoiler *** But what about the ending? None of us had read the novel, so were able only to make our judgements based on what we saw. Another IMDb commentator tells us that the seamstress's re-education via Balzac was life enhancing and that she was saved from a state of ignorance and isolation by it. And that is what most of us saw - but a couple of days later, I began to think again - such a message would hardly have seemed likely to get today's Chinese State's support, so would they allow it to be made within their territory? So,was she a fulfilled young woman, made "better" by Balzac? Which girl left the village before the valley was flooded - she did, but which one was happy and smiling, and even about being moved to a new site in the near future? Not the seamstress - she'd left with no goodbyes, no smile, no security, no company, no long hair, no money, no virginity, no baby and no pride. We heard no more about her than that she'd been sought out by one of the young men, who'd learned that she may have gone to Hong Kong. As what, though? We are not told. As a happy-as-Larry top class clothes designer perhaps, or as a sewing machine sales-person - or as a "lost soul" prostitute? I wonder if someone's got the definitive answer?

It is impossible to understand this story in his real essence. The beautiful skin of love and nice images, the acting and slices of memory are only small details of a horrible era (Chinese Communism of Mao period is more that the best thriller can presents). So, a tale about resistance, about culture like secret and vital refuge is not only interesting or touching but good "remember", too. The life in a country who considers his citizens like social dough is a cruel experience and a survive exercise. In Romania, the Communist regime was not very different but the relates about this period, his reflexion in films is mixture of frustrations and hate. Maybe, this is the normal way after a social crisis. So, the principal virtue of film is the subtle humor. The innocence of resistance, the original game, the delicate resistance against a grotesque situation. In many aspects the film is a charming miniature and it is Sijie Dai's merit to present not only a personal experience, a story of past but a slice of far reality so present in ours life, yet. Same impressive token about a subtle form of resistance is "Flying against the arrow" by Horia- Roman Patapievici.