I Am Not Madame Bovary

I Am Not Madame Bovary (Chinese: Wo Bu Shi Pan Jinlian) (2016) Director: Xiaogang Feng First Seen: 1/24/25 6/10 Stars

Wronged gal seeks revenge in circles and rectangles.

Tale that spans decades- side plots, excess characters, much too long and gimmicky!

An underdog tale told with charm, humor, panache, and a poignant end.

One versus corrupt regime, filmed amidst a lush China!

#Somonka #PoemReview

A traditional poem taking two stances in two stanzas. In fact, it's basically two tankas written as two love letters to each other (one tanka per love letter). This form usually demands two authors, but it is possible to have a poet take on two personas.

Possibly the most daring artistic attempt from Feng Xiaogang, the film tells the story of a peasant woman's petition from the countryside to Beijing because she felt that her divorce was unfair, and differentiate the local and central scenes with a round black and a square black frame respectively. The audience is separated from means of stage play, and the circle frame is wrapped by the square then, and they finally disappears. However, Zhang Yimou's classic "The Story of Qiu Ju" is in the forefront, and Liu Zhenyun's script and even Fan Bingbing's performance limit the result. The film matches Chinese mainstream and overly beautify the from-top-to-bottom bureaucratic culture.

... this is *way* too long for the slight storyline. From about half-way through I was just hoping for it to end.

To be fair, I'm not a fan of courtroom drama so - even though none of this plays out in an actual courtroom - I belatedly realised that the same "individual versus the system" tropes would be at play and I would (did) lose patience. It was a nice touch though to see some of the officials blaming themselves rather than the victim, for a change.

Individual scenes I'm sure would have had Christopher Doyle and Peter Greenaway swooning with the setup and colour balance but for me, these (and the presence of the wonderful Fan Bing Bing) were nowhere near enough to maintain interest.

I'm sure - as a foreigner - I missed or didn't appreciate many of the subtle cultural nuances, but neither do I feel that I learned anything. Never mind.

Bingbing Fan is on a quest for justice. She and her husband got a divorce so they could get a better apartment, but after the divorce, he married someone else. So she wants the divorce overturned, so they can be married again, whereupon she will sue for a divorce.

This confuses the local judiciary, the police department and the entire civil government up to the level of provincial governor -- goodness knows, it confused me -- and gets a review at the national level in Beijing, where the decisions are sustained. This happens for ten years in a row, while judges, majors and even governors lose their jobs, because this crazy woman cannot be stopped.

It's a fine satire of the effects of one determined person on a massive bureaucracy, as various people try to deal with her by varying means. While I found several stretches a bit slow, perhaps this is because in the details of general and particular points to make fun of, the particular points of Chinese government elude me. Even with that in mind, there are lots of good laughs, and some interesting playing around with mattes: the provincial scenes are shown through a circular matte, showing off the squarish architecture, and the Beijing scenes are shown through a small, rectangular matte, showing off the round archways. I think this is supposed to emphasize the difference way that local and national governments look at things. If so, it is a very nice conceit.

It is no secret that I enjoy Asian cinema tremendously, and when I got the chance to watch "I Am Not Madame Bovary", I naturally jumped at it. I had no idea what this movie was about, nor did I know who was starring in it.

I managed to sit through 31 minutes into this ordeal before I just gave up out of sheer and utter boredom. The storyline never really kicked up into any gear that had any kind of appeal to it.

And furthermore, the movie is presented in an unfathomably horrible round frame presentation. And it was a major nuisance to watch that on the screen. And it was definitely a big part of why I just gave up on the movie. Why director Xiaogang Feng opted for this round frame presentation is something that just eludes me.

The acting in the movie was adequate from what I managed to witness throughout the 31 minutes I managed to sit through.

I have no intention of returning to watch the rest of "I Am Not Madame Bovary" (aka "Wo bu shi Pan Jin Lian") solely because of the boredom that it instilled in me and because of the annoying round frame presentation.