Film Forum

China, 2000
Directed by Lou Ye
Starring Zhou Xun, Jia Hongsheng, Nai An, Yao Anlian, Hua Zhongkai
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Approx. 83 min. 4K DCP restoration. 

“A fitfully employed videographer in Shanghai, who never appears on-screen, gets involved with a go-go dancer and then meets a motorcycle courier who’s convinced that the dancer is actually his girlfriend, who has vanished mysteriously after jumping off a bridge. This moody Chinese independent, the debut feature by Lou Ye, at first seems like a Wong Kar-wai remake of VERTIGO, but in fact it’s something much stranger, drawing on not only Hitchcock and CHUNGKING EXPRESS but also Hollywood noir and Hans Christian Andersen to create something relatively fresh from the confluence — a postmodern fairy tale about romantic obsession.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum

Reviews

“A ghost story that’s shot as though it were a documentary — and a documentary that feels like a dream.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“Terrific. Lou Ye lays out a ravishing wasteland of femmes fatales and lovelorn tough guys.”
– Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine

"There are enough genres mashed up in Lou Ye’s 2000 film SUZHOU RIVER to fill a festival, and its complexity is far more than a display of the director’s virtuosity... The puzzle-like complexity of SUZHOU RIVER warns viewers to watch the film strategically, not to take it at face value, to be wary of what they’re seeing even as his enticing tale draws them in.  Lou — a filmmaker of meticulous craft and a powerful sense of symbolism — builds his protagonist’s story around the character’s own storytelling, devising multiple layers of action, from documentary-like exploration to faux-archival video clips to the depiction of fantasy-like fiction that then links up with the protagonist’s daily life.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“A story of love and betrayal, a posthuman noir told by a down-and-out videographer, and the entire narrative is seen through the lens of his camera. When I asked Lou how he had arrived at this first-person technique, the thirty-five-year-old director responded, 'I tried to put myself in the story. But in any case, when you tell another person’s tale you always run the risk of being implicated in it.'”
– Lawrence Chua, Artforum (2000)

“Mercurial and dazzling; it intermittently shifts perspectives and brings memories to its surface in past-tense narration, enmeshing present and past, truth and fiction... As much of the film’s action unfolds in POV, the immediate voyeurism and eroticism of looking through a video camera melds with the material presence, and prolonged process, of film. In this way, Lou makes time float in different directions.”
– Sarah Fensom, Screen Slate

“It's hard not to be swept up by the strong current of SUZHOU RIVER: a seductive and atmospheric conundrum that works pleasingly as an exercise in storytelling.”
– Lizzie Francke, Sight and Sound