Dealing with bureaucracy is one of those experiences which, while seeming the same all over, actually varies greatly from one country to another, each nation’s ingrained system of red tape reflective of its own prejudices, obsessions and cultural values. This essential disconnect makes a film like I Am Not Madame Bovary – a tale of a committed heroine pluckily wading through a seemingly endless institutional morass – both immediately relatable and entirely inscrutable, at least for a non-Chinese audience. A cultural emphasis on face-saving and a lingering discomfort with female assertiveness emerge as the primary political trappings, forming a web of intrigue surrounding a timeless central parable of persistence. So while some nuance may inevitably lost in translation, the film still manages to sustain a portrayal of struggle that’s delicate and deftly told, the long running time allowing for a patient, painterly accretion of conflict.
Things are further complicated, however, by the fact that the mission undertaken by Li Xuelian (Fan Bingbing) is as byzantine and confusing as the system she’s butting up against. After a scam intended to secure some low-cost housing goes wrong, she finds herself attempting to have her divorce rendered null, so that she can be legally declared as married and divorce her cheating husband once again, this time for real. This is a mostly symbolic form of revenge, one that a parade of local functionaries try to dissuade her from, but which Xuelian refuses to let go, dragging her claim forward like a fullback pushing through a tangle of linemen. Her adversaries are uniformly male, from her callous former husband to the officials disputing her claim, with a few apparent allies eventually proving to have less than pure motives themselves.
Alone but determined, Xuelian carries out her quest within a highly unorthodox method of visual presentation, with most scenes conveyed in a cinched circular frame, like an iris-out frozen halfway to its destination. In urban scenes, as Xuelian wades into the hustle and bustle of Beijing, the scope expands to an equally odd, fully squared 1:1 frame. Such tunnel vision is a testament to her adamancy, and also appears to take inspiration from a series of historic circular paintings displayed in the introduction, which explains the fable which gives the film its name.
This title, and the English translation thereof, represents another bit of dissonance between Chinese and American audiences. While Madame Bovary acts as a familiar reference point, the Chinese title, and the characters within the story itself, actually compare Xuelian to Pan Jinlian, a character from the 1610 novel The Plum in the Golden Vase, with whom Bovary shares little in common. As the opening narration explains, she’s famous for plotting with lover to kill her husband, her machinations leaving her name synonymous with a specific sort of devious, femme fatale-style behavior. It’s the comparison to this inauspicious character by her unfaithful partner, despite no apparent wrongdoing on her end, which really sends Xuelian over the edge.
So while the story conveyed here is in many respects universal, and is conveyed with an undeniable level of skill, I Am Not Madame Bovary represents a wide variety of obstacles to the foreign viewer. As Xuelian’s journey pushes on through ten years of lawsuits, it becomes increasingly difficult to grasp the intricacies of this legal system, and why so many officials are forced to take her persistent claims seriously, despite her seemingly lowly status. There’s also the matter of the film itself standing at the center of a simmering controversy, as its famous director, one of the country’s most successful, feuds with the head of his distributor, China’s richest man, over the circumstances of the movie’s release. Factor in one of the country’s biggest stars in the lead role, a complex plot directly reflective of a host of modern issues, and a somewhat misleading title, and it’s easy to be left feeling that, despite its bountiful exterior pleasures, I Am Not Madame Bovary leaves a whole lot more hiding beneath the surface.
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