I Am Not Madame Bovary
Director: Feng Xiaogang
Talent: Chengpeng Dong, Bingbing Fan, Wei Fan, Tao Guo
Released: 26th May
The plot of I Am Not Madame Bovary runs as follows: Li Xuelian, a middle-aged woman living in a village in China, is tricked into signing divorce papers by her cruel husband, and now she wants to balance the scales of justice. Her methods of redress are mostly litigious (though she occasionally veers into murkier waters) and while her husband is her main opponent, along the way she meets and makes enemies of the government officials who refuse to help her.
Though the synopsis might suggest an overtly political sensibility, the film is basically indifferent to this aspect of its plot. Even calling it a ‘satire’, as some commentators have, is a stretch: tonally we flit between dark comedy and lo-fi melodrama.
I was intrigued to find out that this is director Feng Xiaogang’s 16th film. Intrigued, but not surprised. Xaiogang takes a minimal, offbeat, and somewhat repetitive plot, and turns it into a valuable piece of filmmaking. The film’s success is achieved by its inventive formal choices, the most daring being the reduction of the image for 99% of the film. Most of the time we watch the action unfold within a circle, as though through a telescope or peephole, with the rest of the screen blacked out.
This changes when Li arrives in Beijing: remaining the same width, the image extends vertically, becoming tower- or column-like. Far from frustrating, the reduction not only instills scenes with an effective metaphorical weight, but when we come to the end and the image expands fully, it’s a rush, visually.
The score is excellent, and the marrying of weather with location (her home is always shot during or after a rainfall) is both unusual and evocative. Though not the best film you’ll see this year, it will be one of the more memorable.
Words – Tom Lordan
