It's over ten years since Muo has visited his native China. He's been in Paris, exploring his subconscious and devouring the works of Freud and Lacan. But he knew that couldn't last forever. When Muo hears that his first great love has been thrown into a Chinese jail for selling a newspaper article to the foreign press, he feels he must rush home and rescue her. He returns to China where everyone is corruptible, provided you find the right bribe. Sadly, the $10,000 Muo offers Judge Di to free his beloved aren't enough. The judge, tired of cash and cars, orders Muo to bring him a virgin girl to satisfy his sexual predilection for the unsullied. Thus begins a series of hilarious adventures as Muo goes in search of a virgin, setting himself up as an itinerant interpreter of dreams and losing his own virginity in the process. Witty, surreal, moving, wonderfully picaresque, it is packed full of stories, anecdote, incident and mishap, all resulting in a highly enjoyable satire of one innocent man's attempt to negotiate the mind-boggling maze of modern China.
Native of the Fujian province of China, filmmaker and author Dai Sijie left China in 1984 moving to France where he has been living and working ever since. Dai Sijie was sent away from his "bourgeois doctor" parents to be "re-educated" during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966-1971. He was exactly 22 when Mao Zedong died in 1976. He then applied to the University of Arts and was awarded a grant to study abroad.
His first novel "Balzac and the Little Chinise Seastress" was an overnight sensation when it first appeared in France in 2000, becoming an immediate best-seller and winning five prizes.
Dai Sijie is also known as a filmmaker, with three films to his credit: "Chine, ma douleur" (1989), "Le Mangeur de Lune" (1993) and served as both writer and director for "The Eleventh Child" (1998). Dai Sijie has just finished shooting "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress". Shot on location in China, the film is scheduled for release in 2002.
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