Good concept, poorly executed.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

At the core of 2003's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a film directed by a man adapting his own novel, is a bond shared between two men at a time of oppression and punishment - something which is threatened into disintegration on account of a young woman seemingly coming between them. Much later on, when one half of this masculine double-act embraces the titular Chinese seamstress, his long-time friend peers through slats in a nearby shack at their lonely coming together up on a rock beside a stretch of water - itself a highly romanticised image within a film about nastiness at a time of political and cultural strife. As he looks on, there is a looming sense of whatever little fondness the film infers he has for her is clashing with the fact she is coming between him and his friend; in spite of the fact the film is somewhat of a love story, this sense of men and males bonding in harsh circumstances takes centre stage - Dai Sijie's film deceptively about the fondness two people share for a member of the opposite sex and more-so about the understanding two of the same gender have with one another; those around them and their predicament.If one were to say that the sorts of films Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress feigns to be more often than not end with a heterosexual embrace, the final few scenes of this film display a muted mutual understanding of what two people of the same gender went through: thinking along the lines of 'we experienced all of that, lost it, but still have each other'. The characters we observe during the opening shots move in a very robotic manner; they lumber up steep hills to the backdrop of mountains but both the reasons they're there and the tasks they must carry out whilst there do not match up with the picturesque view on display. Where they are is a punishment camp in the nether-regions of early 1970s China, a nation undergoing change what with its cultural and political crises then-presently unfolding closer to the top - a nation deeming it worthy to send a man to one of these rural correctional facilities if it means they were a dentist who corrected a bad tooth for someone in support of the present government's opposition. Such a man is Luo (Chen), a young adult suffering through the same hardships with a good friend named Ma (Liu), of whom is a bit of a musician.From robotic foundations comes the film about characters exploring books and music and other texts at the higher end of culture; items which touch the characters so much that they decide to print verses from their favourite banned material on their shirts so they may feel how they feel. Such a thing strikes us as being akin to people in our contemporary Western world walking around with song lyrics or images from their favourite movies on their T-shirts; we take it as a given, these people must hide their enthusiasm. The film is a piece about two, gently mutating into three, fellows broadening both their creativity and thinking whilst at the same time their feelings for one another. It begins with a finding of a small shed housing banned material, instruments and books by the eponymous Balzac among others. Ceturies old classical works by famous Austrain composers are allowed to be played by the likes of Ma, but only if it means successfully fobbing off the superior officer on guard with promises that it is in actual fact a recent tune promoting the regime.It carries on with the arrival of Xun Zhou's character, an attractive young woman arriving at the camp to hear Ma play and coming to stick around a while longer when she discovers their illegal lust for such things matches that of hers. It progresses further still when Luo and the seamstress get closer than they perhaps should; their occupying of a police-governed and totalitarian state run nation, in which power-play and control plays a large role in factoring how people live; exist and behave, leads to a deep fondness when the seamstress is charged with flogging his back to cure his malaria – this symbolic occurrence of power exchange ultimately leading them to an embrace and affecting their own existence and behaviour. On the one hand, the film is a deftly played love story following three people deeply involved in what they've got themselves into, but it is an affecting dialogue driven drama that slides into believable tragedy as the circumstances they find themselves in, due to certain complications, befall the threesome. Its sense of advancing its characters, in having Ma and Luo enjoy sneaking up on the female population of the camp during the opening exchanges as they bathe nude in a natural spring, is prominent as they come to indulge the seamstress' presence and begin to understand women much more in that regard. The fondness characters develop for one another is believable, while Sijie, what with all the expectancy lumped onto him given it is his novel; his screenplay; his adaptation and his whole project, brings to life this vision's story with punch – the thing totalling up into a worthwhile experience.

An invaluably sad but exceptionally beautiful work of art realistically depicting instability and mutability of all things in modern life. It's inevitably fluid like nature of human evolution between one époque to another. I can feel ethereal touch of Author's filial love to his mother country china. It is easy to see that the Author was torn between his deep seated love for China and Ambition of prosperity on his chosen land (France) at the moment of his life time decision making. This is something that not many understand unless you are forced to leave from your homeland and love ones for a cause. I have left Japan , Kyoto and a noble born beloved fiancé along with almost all things I perceived exquisite at that time for an ambitious cause.Augmented by an outstanding soundtracks with his genius touch in a perfect synchronization with emotion portrayed in screenplay. Since I have played harpsichord continuo part for Haendel's tragic opera such as Alcina, Otone and Radamisto for student soprano singers during rehearsals in the past, I can readily feel Author's masterful quality of refined artistic mind in every scene.This is a second film that I bought for my collection of Dai Sijie's works. I must admit that he is a genius of screenplay when it comes to depicting moments of painful separation. Who else can reproduce so vividly on the screen with such poetic touch today? Julien Kujo, Palo Alto, California

A little bit too quiet is the criticism of the totalitarian Chinese regime in this romantic drama, it's mostly packed into comedy. I heard somewhere that the director Dai Sijie, who also wrote the more critical novel, had to make some major cuts to be allowed to film in China. But "Xiao cai feng" also features some really strong scenes. I was especially touched by the way Sijie includes the building of the Three Gorges Dam in this movie. But if you don't concentrate that much on the political side of this movie you will have I really fine time. It brings to life a sort of ancient magical quality of books to really bring your fantasy to places you will never see in real life. In an isolated place like that this books deliver a feeling of freedom and in the end start a revolution of their own kind. The character development, mostly of the Little Seamstress, is put to screen very well; and also quite lovable.

"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Xiao cai feng)" raises the awkward situation of commenting on a semi-autobiographical story which was originally written, then adapted and directed by the person who lived it in the same, beautiful locations where the events that inspired Sijie Dai took place. How much is fiction and how much is docu-drama? And I haven't read the book so I don't know how much he changed. The basics of the story would seem like a 1940's sci fi allegory of a totalitarian, anti-intellectual society if the Cultural Revolution under the here ubiquitously revered ruler Mao Tse Tung hadn't actually happened, with its anti-literate class-based revenge of kicking the children of the perceived elite out of the cities to rural areas for re-education at rigorous manual labor. In outline, his story is like a real life "Fahrenheit 451" and "the Little Seamstress," the teen ager, played charmingly by Xun Zhou, who gets caught up in a triangle between the out-of-towners, like "Ninotchka." She, startlingly, has far more ambition than the loyal peasant girl in "The Road Home."So it's hard to tell if the strong condescension in the tone to the local peasantry is what the two young men finally learn to overcome or is somewhat shown to be just as endemic in the Communist Party as is seen at the end they were suppressing the beauty of local traditions almost as much as intellectual influences. Because the premise that transforming aesthetics can only come from outside influences through movies, fashion and Western literature and music just seems anthropologically naive as they poke fun at and trick the locals. We do see that the peasants appreciate story telling, sewing and songs - but only of the most earthy kind until the re-educated sneak in their experiences, disguised as homages to Lenin or Mao. For example, with the almost universality of stringed instruments in human culture, it's hard to believe that peasants would be that skeptical when first exposed to a violin. The film is at its strongest, and loveliest, when it sticks to the personal relationships that result from contacts with the locals, as human nature is more powerful than ideology and youth is simply irrepressible and non-Orwellian. The romantic triangle plays out beautifully and gently demonstrates male instincts for Pygmalion control, irrespective of politics. The story affirms the Law of Unintended Consequences, heavily symbolized at the end with the coming of a dam on the river that will have the same effect on these towns as the TVA had on now forgotten communities in Appalachia. This tender and poignant nostalgia is a chronological and thematic prequel to the less optimistic "The World (Shijie)" in showing the impact of globalization on China and its people.