Golden Horse-winning director Feng Xiaogang lampoons Chinese society & bureaucracy in the charmingly astute satirical comedy-drama I Am Not Madame Bovary, which won Best Film, Best Actress & Best Cinematography at the 11th Asian Film Awards. Glamour icon Fan Bingbing plays against type as a humble rural woman who, after being tricked into divorce, embarks on a stubborn decade-long quest for legal redress. Unconventionally presented in circular image format for most of the film, the ingenuous contemporary fable complements its clever humor & sharp script with top-notch performances & brilliantly distinct cinematography. I Am Not Madame Bovary is based on a novel by Liu Zhenyun, whose works also inspired Fengs previous films Cell Phone & Back to 1942.
Village woman Li Xuelian (Fan Bingbing) & her husband (Li Zonghan) decide to divorce in name in order to be allotted better housing. After the "e;fake divorce"e; goes through, her husband gets hitched to another woman. Affronted by his deception & accusations, Xuelian takes her husband to court to demand that the fake divorce be annulled so that she can divorce him for real on her own volition. When her case gets dismissed, Xuelian decides to take her grievances to a higher authority, eventually going all the way to Beijing to seek justice. However, at every step of the bureaucratic ladder, officials dismiss her petitions & go out of their way to avoid her. Undeterred, Xuelian persists with her efforts, year after year.