Dai Sijie directed and adapted his novel into a film, released in 2003, starring Zhou Xun, Liu Ye and Chen Kun.[16]
In the film adaptation, the narrator's name is Ma Jianling (马剑铃). This is a connection to the original French version of the novel in which the narrator describes drawing three symbols that make up the characters in his name, a horse, a sword, and bell.[17] Luo becomes Luo Ming (罗明), although there is no reference to his full name in the novel. In the Mandarin translation of the novel he is referred to by the narrator as A-Luo (阿罗).
