The Chinese Botanist's Daughters

D+

Directed by Dai Sijie

The fact that Dijie Sai's paper thin "The Chinese Botanist's Daughters" won not one but TWO awards at the 2006 Montreal World Film Festival says a whole lot about the sorry quality of that event. I can only hope that such a weak offering from an otherwise talented filmmaker would be coldly received at a more legitimate film festival (say, *cringe* the TIFF?)

Myléne Jampinoi plays Min Li, a young student who is sent to study under a famed botanist during a six month internship. The sour welcome offered to her by the coarse and moody botanist is mitigated by the warmth of his daughter Cheng An. Min Li and Cheng An quickly strike up a warm friendship that (in seemingly no time at all) turns into a rapturous romance. Not wanting to part ways at the end of Min Li's internship, the two come up with a thoroughly half baked plan to remain together.

Dai Sijie's previous effort, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," a thoughtful story about a pair of boys sent to rural China for "re-education" during Mao's rule, was a promising effort that married lush production values with a sober handling of the hardships faced by Chinese citizens during communist rule. "The Chinese Botanist's Daughters'" however, is a thinly scripted and at times lazy story that has at its core a romance that lacks any authenticity. The romantic relationship between Min Li and Cheng An is barely explained and they seem to fall into each other's arms almost the minute Min Li arrives in town. Their subsqequent scheme to stay together is both suspiciously naive and seems to have been engineered by writer Nadine Perront purposefully to set up a b it of faux drama that would segway easily to a tragic denouement.

As lacking as this film is in anything related to serious content, it's still beautiful to look at and if your eyes just need a quick vacation you could do worse than letting them feast on the lush scenery on display in Dai Sijie's film.