Synopsis
I Am Not Madame Bovary (我不是潘金莲, 2016) is Feng Xiaogang's biting tragicomedy starring Fan Bingbing, available to watch online on iFILM. Country woman Li Xuelian agrees to a fake divorce, only for her husband to marry someone else and brand her a loose woman in front of the whole village.
Furious, Li sets out to prove she is not "Pan Jinlian," China's textbook name for an adulteress. She sues her ex-husband, then the judge, then works her way up the chain of officials. For ten years this stubborn peasant carries her complaint higher and higher, from the county court all the way to Beijing, while every bureaucrat she meets wants nothing more than for her to disappear and stop denting their record.
Feng frames almost the entire film inside a circle, the image masked like a view through an old Chinese fan-window, turning a satire of officialdom into something close to a folk parable. The film took the Golden Shell at San Sebastián, where Fan Bingbing was named best actress. Sharp, surprisingly funny, and quietly furious about one person against the machine. Stream I Am Not Madame Bovary online on iFILM.
Starring
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