Suzhou River

Summary

A faceless, nameless videographer tells a love story set in Shanghai. Mardar is a motorcycle courier, Moudan is a young woman, whose father has hired him to drive her around. They fall in love. When Mardar takes part in a plot to kidnap Moudan, she throws herself into the Suzhou River. Years later, Mardar thinks he recognises his lost love – in the person of Meimei, the girlfriend of the video narrator, who performs as a mermaid in a nightclub…

As in Hitchcock's "Vertigo", the love in "Suzhou he" is resurrected from the dead. Shot on coarse-grain 16mm stock, the film is a captivating Chinese variation on the neo-noir trend of the era. At the same time, it draws a portrait of a generation that had been uprooted, shifting between neo-realistic urban images that capture Shanghai in a radical state of flux, and night-time passages that conjure up the alternative sub-culture. Director Lou Ye thus creates a cinematic puzzle of illusion and reality, all the while chronicling a wonderfully tragic love story.

Source: 72. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)