Author: Vf DVD

Format: NTSC

Release Date: 02-12-2003

Details: Amazon.ca One would think that Dai Sijie has all the talents. He himself adapted for the big screen and directed Balzac and the Little Chinese Tailor from his first novel (largely autobiographical), which was a success in bookstores. But transcribing a literary emotion into images is not always easy. In the China of the 1970s, under Mao's Cultural Revolution, intellectuals deemed dangerous were sent for “re-education” in the countryside. It is in this context that Luo and Mao, sons of scientists, are parachuted into the Mountain of the Phoenix of the sky, a lost region on the borders of Tibet. Both will soon fall under the spell of the tailor's daughter and introduce her to the clandestine pleasures of the mind. Culture is often the first victim of dictatorships. The transmission of knowledge, openness to the world can go through books and Balzac and the Little Chinese Tailor succeeds in paying a fine tribute to literature. But if the film is skilful in representing the atmosphere of the Cultural Revolution and the magnificent landscapes of China, it is much less so in evoking the troubled feeling which unites the two boys to the young tailor. In addition, an added final scene, cutesy and sentimental, further undermines the coherence of the work. How novels are sometimes enough on their own... --Helen Faradji

UPC: 773933174420

EAN: 0773933174420

Languages: English

Binding: DVD

Item Condition: Used Good