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Review by
Calvin
McMillin: |
"If I leave you someday,"
the beautiful Meimei (Zhou Xun) asks via voiceover, "would
you look for me?" Thus begins Suzhou River, a
Shanghai-set film noir from Chinese auteur Lou Ye. As it turns
out, these opening lines are the crux of Suzhou River's
twisty plot, a meditation on the desperate, seemingly endless
search for true love in the cruel, dark world of contemporary
society.
The film's narrator, unseen
and unnamed, tells Suzhou River's jumpy, dream-like
tale. As a world-weary freelance videographer, the narrator
makes a deal with the owner of a local bar to make a video
of the joint's mermaid show. The show features the aforementioned
Meimei, a rebellious knockout who, as part of her Daryl Hannah
routine, dons a blond wig and an orange fishtail. Naturally,
the videographer falls madly in love with Meimei, but soon
learns of her the sad life from a second man, Mardar (Jia
Hongsheng).
Combining Meimei's facts with a healthy
bit of guesswork, the narrator reconstructs for the audience
the story of the mysterious Mardar. He tells us that Mardar
was a dropout who worked as a motorcycle courier to make ends
meet. It was in this capacity that he met a pretty girl named
Moudan. With her pigtails and elfin grin, Moudan is the prototype
for wide-eyed innocence. The plot thickens when we find that
Moudan, who's the complete antithesis of the jaded Meimei,
is played by the very same actress, Zhou Xun.
But just as this love story
begins to take off, the narrator adds new details about the
stoic Mardar. In truth, Mardar is involved in a life of crime,
and it is not long before his gangland employers, Lao B. and
Xiao Ho, order him to kidnap Moudan to make a quick buck.
Mardar complies with their wishes, an act of betrayal that
so traumatizes Moudan that she escapes from her lover/captor
and plunges - mermaid doll in hand, mind you - into the murky
waters of the Suzhou River.
We leave the scene with Moudan
presumed dead and Mardar on his way to jail. When the narrative
returns to the present time period, Mardar is fresh out of
jail after having served time for his hand in the kidnapping.
Here, the story makes an interesting shift: the unseen narrator
gives up his role and hands it to Mardar, who becomes the
de-facto narrator for most of the film hence. From this point,
Mardar spins a yarn of how he met and became enthralled with
Meimei, herself a dead ringer for his long-lost Moudan. After
that, things get just a tad bit weirder.
Is Meimei actually Moudan, or
isn't she? That's the big question of Suzhou River,
and to be honest, the surprising answer will leave some audience
members puzzled and perhaps dissatisfied. That's part of the
problem with having such a clever narrative gimmick: once
you reveal who's who, somebody's going to be disappointed.
But to her credit, Zhou Xun plays her scenes as Meimei superbly,
leaving just enough in her performance to convince half the
crowd that she's the resurrected Moudan and the other half
that she's a total sham. In the end, it matters little if
Meimei is Moudan or if Mardar ever finds his true love. Lou
Ye's Suzhou River should be thought of not in terms
of how it ends, but how it develops. Ultimately, the film
resonates in its echoing of that oh-so-popular aphorism about
life: it's the journey, not the destination. (Calvin McMillin, 2002)
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