franbelle10

This film had great potential.

It starts intelligently and maintains its interest for the first three quarters of its duration (until Nazareth's departure to Bethlehem). The acting is relevant, and all characters all have palpable human and spiritual thickness, notably Mary and Herod - and even Joseph, through his passion and joy and doubts. Up to two-thirds of the film, scenario, dialogue, behavior, atmosphere remain plausible and bring an unprecedented and intellectually interesting narrative angle to the story we all know.

And then, lamentably, inexplicably, the scenario suddenly plunges into the limbo, moves away from the narrative as reported by the Gospels, accelerates (and consequently shrinks, stuns), and turns into a violent peplum using the aesthetic, cinematic and messianic codes of Denis Villeneuve's Dune.

Unfortunately, by its brutality and the irreversible turnaround that it imparts to the personalities and tone of the film, this distressing end alone is enough to annihilate the efforts made during the first part and irretrievably destroy all the qualities of the previous patiently developed.

Regrettable.

The main quality of this production - the marital tribulations of a young girl from the Chinese bourgeoisie, jostled by the Maoist revolution - is also its main flaw.

Although production is of an acceptable quality, although the subtleties of traditional Chinese marriage are presented to us with subtlety and curiosity; the film lacks epic breath.

The whims of a child spoiled by his father, his marital setbacks, are not enough to receive attention. Above all, the underlying historical context is very lessened. The seizure of power by the Maoists is presented as a pleasure and the damage of the Cultural Revolution is strangely ignored. Certainly, not all the Chinese experienced the upheavals of the second half of the twentieth century with the same intensity, but what is being given here is still a little light.