Stars: Zhou Xun, Jia Hongshen, Nai An

Director: Lou Ye

Summary: Bearing some resemblance to the 'Vertigo' plot line. Marder, a criminal must mind Moudan, the daughter of a smuggler and they fall in love. When Marder is persuaded to kidnap and ransom her, she kills herself. Later he meets a woman called MeiMei who seems very familiar to him...

With SUZHOU RIVER, director Lou Ye has created an intense, jerky visual and narrative style that captivates viewers and pulls them into the mystery of the film's dreamy, alluring tale of love and mistaken identities. The narrator--the voice behind the camera (literally) who occasionally sticks his hand out in front of the lens to spraypaint a stencil on the side of a building or pick up a drink from the bar--guides the viewer along the banks of the heavily polluted and industrialised Suzhou River, which winds precariously through Shanghai, setting the scene for the major action of the film's plot. Back in his apartment, he tells the sad story of Marda (Jia Hongshen), a bicycle messenger who falls madly in love with a young girl named Moudan (Zhou Xun). Marda becomes entangled with a messy crime gang that forces him to kidnap Moudan and demand ransom money from her rich father. Moudan escapes from him before he receives the money and jumps into the poisonous river, promising that one day she'll return as a mermaid. Marda serves a three-year jail sentence for his crime, wracked with grief about causing Moudan's supposed death. Upon his release, he walks into a nightclub and sees a woman performing an underwater mermaid act in a tank. She looks exactly like Moudan, but she is named MeiMei (also played by Zhou). Coincidentally, MeiMei is dating the cameraman-narrator, bringing the plot full circle. An enticingly surreal film that is successful primarily for its narrative twists, SUZHOU RIVER shares many thematic elements with Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO.

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A film from China directed by Lou Ye, Suzhou Riveris a story of doomed romantic love very different from the social realism of many contemporary Chinese films. Set in modern Shanghai, it's about Mardar, a motorcycle courier who gets involved with Moudan, the daughter of a businessman. When she learns he's implicated in a scheme to kidnap her, she jumps off a bridge into the river. Devastated, Mardar refuses to believe Moudan has drowned and eventually thinks he's found her, now performing a mermaid act in a sleazy bar. But the narrator of the story tells him she's Meimei, another woman. Which of them is right? The story has strong echoes of the Hitchcock classic Vertigo, in which James Stewart searches for his lost love. Stylishly shot, teasingly told, this is an intriguing film with a melancholy ending, though Zhou Xun, who plays both female parts, doesn't quite have the charisma of Vertigo's Kim Novak. --Ed Buscombe

Aspect Ratio:	Wide Screen
Main Language:	Mandarin
Region:	Region 0
Special Features:	Theatrical Trailer, In Shanghai A Short Film By Lou Ye, Stills Gallery
Subtitles:	English
Year:	2000
Release Date:	December 8, 2003
Runtime:	83 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	A R T 196 D V D
Keywords:	River, Subtitled, Off, General, Wide, Screen, He, Drama, Mandarin, Schedule, Suzhou
Genre:	Drama