This week’s movie up for review is I Am Not Madame Bovary.

I went into this one blind. I didn’t read the reviews, and I didn’t consider any ratings. I didn’t know what to expect, so I reserved all judgment until the end.

Now let’s get it!

The story takes place in modern-day China, where women aren’t necessarily stoned for premarital or extramarital sex. Still, they are looked down upon and labeled indecent—or, in this case, Pan Jinlian.

It follows a ten-year period in Li Xuelian’s life as she attempts to make those she feels wronged her pay.

No Honor Among Thieves

She and her husband, Qin Yuhe, tried to scam the system, but it backfired tremendously.

She thought they wanted a larger family, but he wanted a divorce.

People get married and get divorced like they’re ordering takeout. Gone are the days when you’re stigmatized—unless, of course, you’re in the church. Those people will crucify you.

I ask: why didn’t he just ask her for the divorce he obviously wanted?

Of course, she would’ve fought him, but at least he and his current wife wouldn’t have suffered as much as they did.

Or maybe he would’ve.

I didn’t get the sense that Li Xuelian had an identity of her own. It didn’t seem like she saw herself as anything other than a wife.

I mean, the woman owned a whole restaurant, and she had men falling over themselves to be with her.

But she was still hanging on to a man who had no qualms about tarnishing her reputation.

That was until she dropped the tidbit about the miscarriage, and then it became pure revenge for her.

Qin Yuhe, probably knowing how tenacious his wife could be, would’ve happily stayed in their loveless marriage, but he saw an opportunity and took it.

The unsaved version of me would’ve given him more hell than Li Xuelian did, but the healed and whole version of me now sees the miscarriage as a blessing and chooses to move forward.

It sounds terrible, but losing one’s peace is not an option.

Besides, if he was willing to stoop that low to get rid of her, who knows what else he’s capable of?

A man like that isn’t worth hanging on to, is he?

But my question now is: what happened to their first child?

This whole business began because of the one-child restriction, but we never hear about the child again after the explanation behind the divorce.

This movie put me in mind of Acrimony.

Melinda Moore, played by Taraji P. Henson, married her college sweetheart, Robert Gayle, who promised her the world.

Long story short, she fully invested in him, but his promises kept coming up short.

One day, however, his invention takes off—but by then they’d already divorced.

To get back at her for giving up on him, he torments her by giving another woman everything he once promised her.

Instead of moving forward, she dwells on past grievances.

Eventually, her rage boils over, and spoiler alert: she kills them both.

I absolutely recommend the movie, if only for the lesson it taught me:

Learn to forgive and keep moving forward.

Li Xuelian doesn’t seem all that educated.

In my mind, I kept asking: where was Li Xuelian’s mother? Her sisters? Her community?

Why didn’t anyone take her by the hand and explain, in simple terms, why she was never going to marry Qin Yuhe again?

But knowing how people like to gossip, I realized they were probably the ones helping spread the rumors.

After all, her only companion was a talking cow.

Somewhere along the line, Li Xuelian got lost.

That rat bastard, Zhou Datou, raped her.

But she enjoyed it.

I don’t care what argument anyone tries to put forward—that bastard raped her.

This is exactly the type of case where, had she tried to report him, the police probably wouldn’t have taken her side because:

A) He’s her lover.

B) She enjoyed it.

The worst part is that she’d been so traumatized by her marriage to Qin Yuhe that she had never really enjoyed sex.

So the only time she actually experienced pleasure was at the hands of this cretin.

I wanted her to be more outraged, but she enjoyed it.

What can you do?

Shockingly, the government officials tried to help her, but in the end, they mostly cared about protecting their jobs.

Honestly, I didn’t know how to feel about this movie.

There are no innocent parties.

Their divorce merely revealed corruption at every level.

This movie lives in the gray for me.

It’s not good.

It’s not bad.

It’s just really depressing.

Final sidenote: this film has a Wes Anderson feel to it, no? The color grading and the weird framing it has going on.

Anypoops, I give it 3 rose petals.