Wo bu shi Pan Jin Lian

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.

This film has so much potential. It's got good timing sequences, the cinematography is unique and the style is reminiscent of Wes Anderson.

However, the details is just not quite there. Considering the director's bold move to choose such a small focus frame many aspects lack care.

Raining scenes on the river shows clearly it's not raining in the distance. Many side characters clearly has no acting background with exaggerated body language and tone which was off putting. Some of the actors were not able to mimic the local accent consistently.

Overall a very beautifully filmed movie with some great composition and interesting comedic elements. But if you have the knowledge of the language and quality of media in China, you might have also felt the lack of care because these are very basic cinema mistakes in TV dramas and B-grade movies.

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.

Every man is a good actor. But the director is not good enough, especially this kind of novel garbage picture. The story of the whole film is to develop in the direction of black satire, but because of commercial considerations, dare not say very thoroughly. Only Mayor Ma said something about the substance.

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.