I Am Not Madame Bovary review – smart satire cuts through China's bureaucracy

There is a lot to admire about this pointed modern-day political satire, but you’ll have to get over a few hurdles. One of them is the unnecessary length, another is the distracting use of a circular frame – a device that references Chinese art and hints at its heroine’s constrained plight, but often makes the viewer feel as if they’re peering through a keyhole. The heroine is a comically stubborn villager (a spirited, uglified Fan Bingbing) who embarks on a perverse mission to get her sham divorce overturned so that she can redivorce her cheating husband properly. He’s added insult to injury by likening her to Pan Jinlian, a literary character associated with promiscuity (misleadingly translated to Madame Bovary in the English title). These grievances are clumsily handled by a succession of self-serving, buck-passing officials, in a similar fashion to Zhang Yimou’s The Story of Qui Ju. The satirical bite dissipates a little as the story drags on, though a powerful, emotional coda makes it worth the wait.