Suzhou River (Lou Ye, 2000)

2000 was a watershed year in Chinese-language cinema.¹⁠ The year of milestones like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and In the Mood for Love and Yi yi alongside lesser-known but equally important films like Jia Zhangke’s Platform, and Jiang Wen’s Devils on the Doorstep, Johnnie To’s Needing You…, and Fruit Chan’s Durian Durian. It was also the year of Lou Ye’s second feature, Suzhou River, a beguiling amalgam of Hitchcock and Wong Kar-wai, New Wave indie aesthetics and post-modern narrative trickery. It begins with images of Shanghai captured from a boat floating along the eponymous river, our narrator, referred to only as The Videographer, telling us about his hobby of filming everything he sees. He tells us about the woman he loves, Meimei, who dresses like a mermaid and swims at the Happy Tavern and is played by Zhou Xun. She tells him about a man named Mardar who loved a woman named Moudan so much he searched for her for years. During one of Meimei’s many absences, The Videographer begins to assemble the story of Mardar and Moudan (also played by Zhou Xun), at first he seems to be assembling it out of his own footage and imagination, but gradually it comes to resemble a conventional film. The story quickly changes from a simple tale of love into a petty crime saga. Then it changes back to a love story, where it intersects uneasily with the story, the life, of Meimei and The Videographer themselves

¹Originally published at InReview Online.