On two consecutive Mondays, March 21 and 28, the Health and Wellness office presented screenings of the 2002 film Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress in the Campus Center. The movie is the third installment in a series of Asian films that are being shown this semester at UMass Boston.

The film is about two friends, Luo and Ma, who are sons of intellectuals. They are being shipped to the country to be reeducated by the Chinese government. The story takes place during the Cultural Revolution, which occurred in China during the sixties and seventies.

During that time, Communist leader Mao Si Dong wanted all the educated people of the country to lead a lifestyle similar to the one that the peasants in the countryside lived. He reasoned that everybody should be on an even ground, and if he took all of the culture away from the elitist class then the country would be in a better position to be successful communists, unlike the attempt in the Soviet Union.

The first scene shows the two boys gathered with the peasants in a house in the village. One of the reactionaries finds Luo’s cookbook and burns it exclaiming, “Revolutionary peasants will never be corrupted by a filthy bourgeois chicken!” They almost burn Ma’s violin, until he starts to play it, and he saves his instrument by reassuring them that “Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao.”

The boys discover that the village is known for having the prettiest girls in the countryside. They go to spy on the girls while they are swimming in the pond, and they are wearing only their underwear. When Luo and Ma meet the little seamstress, they are charmed by her innocence and naiveté. She is entranced by their alarm clock with the rooster inside. The boys are both drawn to her simplicity.

One of the people that was being reeducated was Four-Eyes, a vociferous young man who got his name from the glasses he wore. He also spoke openly of how he was so happy to find the true meaning to life with the peasants and he embraced his new identity. Luo and Ma heard a rumor that he had a suitcase full of translated western books in his room, and they formulated a plan to steal it. They crept into his room and stole the books right from under him.

The boys hid the books in a cave outside the village. They read the books to the little seamstress, captivating her with stories by French writers Balzac and Dumas. They told the stories to the villagers as if they were movies and the people all thought they were the most wonderful entertainment they had ever known.

Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress was based on the author’s real experience during the Cultural Revolution, but it was written in French, the author’s adopted tongue. The book has been translated into 25 languages, but surprisingly, none of them have been Chinese.

Balzac defeated the little seamstress, whose real name the audience never learns. Luo and Ma opened a world for her that she never knew existed, and the bubble of her secure worldview burst. The end of the film is incredibly unsatisfying.

The film is thought provoking, and it brings up the issue of how books and other works of art have changed people’s lives. A book can change a person’s view of the world in an entirely different way, be it positive or negative, and sometimes it can scar a person forever, as in the case with the little seamstress.