Suzhou River by Lou Ye (2000) *China

Suzhou River by Lou Ye (2000) - Discussion with Chloe

by Ng Suat May on Saturday, 30 April 2011 at 14:53

Personal Thoughts:

I would say that Suzhou River is one film that you may need to prepare some headache pills. ;-) Because of the frequent, fast movements of the hand-held camera, I felt very giddy watching the show. It is interesting how the narrator of the story never shows his face on screen. We are watching the first part of the film from the narrator's point of view. Only his voice, his silhouette behind a door and probably his hand which was holding on to a cigarette were shown. The other male character, Marda (Jia Hong Sheng), looks like Jackie Chan and his name just reminds me of “mata” – a Malay word for police. “Mata” (police) should project an image of a righteous and responsible person yet Marda, in this film, was involved in illicit dealings and even played a part in kidnapping his girlfriend. Does this sound illogical??? ;-) Overall, I think the cinematic techniques used are rather unique but I won’t want to risk getting another giddy spell. Also, the film is OK.

Oh… and I noticed that a very brightly-lit bulb appeared in quite a few scenes.

“Lou's decision to use the figure of the mermaid - which isn't part of Chinese folklore - is characteristic of the global outlook of his sixth-generation film-making contemporaries. Similarly he markedly embraces what was presumably illicit cinema history by paying a clear stylistic debt to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the perennial favorite of cinéphile directors worldwide. The river, the bridge, the obsessive, haunted protagonist and the girl who might not be quite who she seems: this drifting reverie of a film shares elements that have figured in countless movies inspired by Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece from Chris Marker's art house sci-fi La Jetée (1962) to Paul Verhoeven's glossy thriller Basic Instinct (1992). But Suzhou River is less a radically new spin on Hitchcock's film than a free-fall replay that revels in its lachrymose love story, as Mardar, like Vertigo's hero Scottie, falls for a woman who's seemingly the double of his lost love.”

- Lizzie Francke (Extracted from http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/520)

I did not take much notice of the rationale behind the use of a mermaid in this film till I read the review by Lizzie Francke. In the film, it was rumored that a mermaid was seen in Suzhou River after the death of Mudan (Zhou Xun). She was holding to a mermaid doll when she jumped into the river. The doll was a present from Marda whom she loved very much but was betrayed. Truly, mermaids do not exist in Chinese folklore so it is rather odd to introduce a mermaid in the Suzhou River.

Watch Vertigo (by Alfred Hitchcock) trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trDqSL_RAsY&feature=related

Seems like a good film… :-)

“With its fractured, dissolving, indeterminate and unreliable narrators and a narrative marked by self-reflexive mise-en-abîme, Suzhou River deflates even the possibility of a stable subject, of a singular, reliable point-of-view, right from its opening river-boat montage. As highly fractured as the narrative is, though, the film's style, despite its being rife with jump cuts, alternations between film and video, and steady-cam restlessness, imposes kind of unity on the text that is quite sneakily deceptive. The colours are lush, rather than film-noir obscure, saturated with evening yellows and reds, shabby industrial browns and a heightened, eerie night-club light effect. The music, too, is lushly orchestrated.” – Shelly Kraicer at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, April 2000, http://www.chinesecinemas.org/suzhou.html

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    Ng Suat May Ehh... I don't really know what else to say about this film...

    Yesterday at 15:07 ·
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    Chloe Christabella Tang

    Yah, it didn't occur to me why they wanted to use the mermaid as a main connecting factor between Mudan & Meimei. Mudan's last words "If I die, I will become a mermaid to look for you" lead Marda to think that Meimei might be Mudan, and leads him to share his story with her, and from then, irrevocably changing Meimei and her outlook on love and relationships.
    
    In http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/clode_review.html, it describes this prophecy as a clever infusion by Lou Ye of the narrative and sub-narrative threads. The characters are then interweaved with one another, with Marda then meeting Meimei and impacting her greatly. Meimei then resolves to let the protagonist come looking for her to prove that such a love story exists, and to make good his promise to her, that we hear right at the opening of the film, with a black screen, concentrating the audience only on their dialogue.
    
    Like you mentioned the filmmaking technique is largely using a voyeuristic handheld camera made to depict point of view and it is really quite difficult for viewers to orientate. The opening of the film also consists of handheld canted shots of the buildings that are in the process of being built. This then contrasts with a compilation of more relatively level perspective of developed buildings that border on the suzhou river. The protagonist's job as a videographer also acts as a unifying theme in which he views the world through his lenses, as we the audience are viewing the characters' world, and by extension the director's idea of Suzhou River as the only unchanging thing that runs through Shanghai, even in the midst of modernisation. Instead of choosing to showcase Shanghai's glamorous side of modernisation (we see this in the shot where Marda finds Mudan again) it aims to depict Shanghai more completely through showing the abandoned warehouses and incomplete buildings.
    
    Like the protagonist describes, Suzhou River is the source of livelihood for many in Shanghai. It is also a symbol of the change that flows through the city. There are noir influences in this film, with its interest in the night life, Meimei's character as a nightclub worker, Marda as a courier but dabbles with the underworld, a dark and decrepit mise-en-scene, and where its characters are caught in an endless struggle to find meaning in their lives, searching for love.
    
    I also spotted some references to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window due to the shots of the protagonist always looking out of his window onto the bridge overlooking Suzhou River. The use of the camera as one that mirrors the gaze of the city and his quiet spying and waiting for Meimei is reminiscent of Hitchcock's masterpiece.

    9 hours ago · · 1 person
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    Chloe Christabella Tang

    There are also many jump cuts like we can see right in the beginning of the film with the protagonist talking to the Kai Xin Guan boss, which add to the voyeuristic feel of the film, heavily stylised. In this review inhttp://www.beyondhollywood.com/suzhou-river-2000-movie-review/ it points out that "The camera is constantly on the move, its gaze never resting for more than a few seconds, and this does give a sense of breathless urgency that keeps things moving swiftly throughout the scant eighty minute running time. This too adds to the gritty realism of the film, despite the deliberately choppy editing techniques employed." I think much as there are some documentary like elements to the film, much of it is Lou Ye's way of portraying a different Shanghai.
    
    This film is a very good example of the 6th generation filmmakers' works which use a lot of ambient sound, are low budget and has a very individualistic, anti-romantic kind of world view. Although they are low budget, one cannot deny Suzhou River's aesthetics in creating a rather dream like but dark contemporary urban life picture of Shanghai. There is an underlying sense of dissatisfaction in the film.

    9 hours ago ·
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    Ng Suat May

    Like the part in which you talked about Suzhou River as a symbol of change...
    
    "Suzhou offers a narrator/narration that remains sufficiently indeterminate and unreliable to deflate any possibility of a stable subject from which to unravel this unlikely tale. At times, the videographer abdicates his story-telling responsibilities to Meimei and Mada, destabilising and merging various identities. The narrator's torment over the loss of Meimei is vented and rationalised vicariously through his fairy-tale understanding of Mada. The motif of heavy rain is successfully employed to suggest and remind that recollections of Mada and Mudan are tempered by the videographer's own frustration. Distinction between the two male protagonists is made problematic by their mutual obsession for the impenetrably ethereal Meimei. Meimei's own transition from dangerous seductress to fallible romantic—manifest in her yielding to Mada's vision of her—produce the possibility she is indeed Mudan, further clouding notions of identity." - Jerry Clode
    
    I feel that this paragraph from the review you found allows me to understand the film better - the rationale behind certain cinematic techniques/setting employed... :-)

    7 hours ago ·