I Am Not Madame Bovary reunites Golden Horse-winning director Feng Xiaogang with megastar Fan Bingbing and screenwriter Liu Zhenyun, who previously collaborated with him on Cell Phone (2003), an exploration of modern technology and personal relationships that proved a huge domestic hit. Here Liu adapts his 2012 novel I Am Not Pan Jinlian, whose title refers to a character from Song dynasty literature who met a grisly end after plotting to murder her husband with her lover. (“Pan Jinlian” has since become a byword for “indecent woman” in Chinese culture, and so the English translation of the title chooses ‘Madame Bovary’ for its similarly adulterous connotations.)

“Whether it’s Peking Opera, expansive landscapes or small-scale shots of raindrops, you could quite easily watch this film for the sublime visuals alone.”

Anchored by a singularly impressive performance from an almost unrecognisable Fan Bingbing, the film holds up a mirror to the entrenched corruption at every level of the legal system. The officials Lian interacts with scramble to pass the buck and shore up their own positions, willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of her, except, of course, actually deal with her case.

The imbalance between centralised and local power structures in China is a pressing issue - to understand why the state is so afraid of Lian, one need only consider the (recently abolished) petition ranking system in local government, which counts the number of complaints against an official to justify who gets promoted, but treats all complaints equally seriously - 15 gripes about a broken traffic light would be considered more serious than 1 about police brutality.

There is also the question of the title insult to Lian’s chastity. Qin snarls at Lian that she wasn’t a virgin when they got married – while attitudes towards premarital sex are changing, there remains ‘chunü qingjie’ (‘virgin complex’), and it is not unheard of for women to purchase artificial hymens for their wedding night. Debate on the subject has recently erupted afresh on social network Weibo, over academic Ding Xuan’s “feudal” presentation on female purity, as well as a recent episode of TV drama Ode to Joy which saw protagonist Qiu Yingying dumped for not being a virgin.

The satire here is thus well-warranted and keenly observed, and while the tone is low-key and mostly rather bleak, there are a few laugh-out-loud scenes. The cinematography is also a major selling point: Luo Pan has an eye for the gorgeous, whether it’s Peking Opera, expansive landscapes or small-scale shots of raindrops, you could quite easily watch this film for the sublime visuals alone.

“A visual delicacy that has a lot to say about its homeland, and brings a powerful emotional pay-off.”

However, while rural China is beautiful to look at, the unusual aspect ratio of a circular frame, transitioning to a square only in Beijing slightly limits what the film is able to do. It’s certainly a bold way to physically represent the limitations of village life, and reinforce the parallels with the classical Chinese illustrations of Pan Jinlian, but it ultimately forces a lot of scenes to become overly static, and becomes wearing being used at such great length.

Speaking of length: the film is definitely excessively long, clocking in at a weighty 2hrs 20 mins, which could easily be trimmed down by readjusting the pacing in the second act. After a strong start, the time jump 10 years forward sees the film begin to lumber, repeating the same points in numerous metaphor-rich conversations between officials that do nothing to advance the plot and which I found myself zoning out of.

The tone also lurches slightly to the saccharine in the final ten minutes, becoming slightly too on-the-nose in delivering its moral message, but one has to give Feng credit for having produced such a well-crafted production that this more overt politics was able to make it past the censors.

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I Am Not Madame Bovary is not going to be for everyone. It demands your concentration to follow the intricacies of Lian’s bureaucratic crusade, and immerses you relentlessly in what is going to be an unfamiliar political landscape to many. If you want to see something very different to anything else on offer, I Am Not Madame Bovary is a visual delicacy that has a lot to say about its homeland, and brings a powerful emotional pay-off.

If you’re looking for arsenic and Parisian je ne sais quoi, you’re not going to find it here. What you will find is an exquisitely shot, quiet satire of modern China that leads to an affecting conclusion - if you’re willing to be extremely patient