Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Empire Pictures | Release Date: July 29, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleJonathan Curiel
Sweet, funny, sad and profound -- the sort of film that becomes more remarkable when you realize it's based on someone's real life. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
An oddity: an adaptation of a popular novel co-written and directed by the novelist himself. It's also a fine, gentle film love story and a cinematic tribute to the power and manifold benefits of communications between different cultures and nations. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A funny, sad and absolutely lovely film. Read full review
80
Washington PostDesson Thomson
If the movie is straightforward and predictable in its attitude, it also exudes a sort of documentary lyricism. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
For an exquisitely melancholy story steeped in a sense of the past as a succession of great waves of political, ideological and economic change, it's fitting that the movie should end with an underwater sequence. It looks like a dream of a memory of a place about to be wiped out by the next great flood of history. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. Musetto
A meditation on literature, love and remembrance that is able to find humor and hope in the dark days of the Cultural Revolution. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
It's a fanciful tale, but the message is sweet - that the higher arts speak a universal language that transcends politics and ignorance. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Enlightenment is good, Dai acknowledges. But the movie's more provocative assertion is the notion that ignorance was also a kind of bliss. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy Burr
In the end, it's a lovely little movie about very big things, and the smallness both illuminates it and keeps it from greatness. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
It makes for an unusual angle on the era, and a passionate paean to the power of books, ideas and art. Read full review
70
VarietyDavid Stratton
A visually lush and very Westernized vision of life in a remote Chinese village in the early 1970s. Read full review
70
Village VoiceEd Park
Though the film lacks some of the paper incarnation's subtlety, Dai's infidelity to his own text keeps things interesting. He busts the book's brief time frame, tweaks countless plot points, and tops it all off with a titanic metaphor not found in his own pages. Read full review
70
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Dai Sijie's tender, touching adaptation of his own novel of the same title. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
By turns merry, tough-minded and sweetly nostalgic. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Artfully designed to appeal to lovers of romance and books, but by the end of the film I was not convinced it knew much about either. Read full review
60
Washington PostTeresa Wiltz
Sure, Balzac meanders at too leisurely a pace. But the actors are charming; the story sweet Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderPatrick Z. McGavin
The ethereal private moments and inspired passages are beautifully shot by Jean-Marie Dreujou, but Dai never quite organizes the material dramatically, and the tone is too often jagged and disruptive. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
Sijie mostly adapts his own work dryly and literally—the footage of the Chinese mountainside is breathtaking, but it's the only thing in the film with much depth. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The story is winning but the telling, with Dai adapting and directing from his own novel, is too sentimental in the long run. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverMelissa Levine
The film is beautifully shot and well-acted, but, like the book, it never achieves anything like the import of the stories that inspired it. Balzac is even a little dull, especially toward the end. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarrit Ingman
Cute and toothless as a kitten, Seamstress doesn't inspire the same kind of fervent devotion its principals feel when confronted with art, but it does make a pleasant enough diversion. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Demonstrating just how different literature and filmmaking can be, filmmaker-turned-writer-turned filmmaker Dai Sijie botches an adaptation of his own best-selling short novel. Read full review
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