Suzhou River

Jia Hongsheng

Lou Ye's Suzhou River, from 2000, is a disjunctive noir set in Shanghai. The film is purposefully hard to follow for a number of reasons. Foremost is that Mr. Lou shifts the film's point of view, from the first person POV of a videographer (Zhang Ming Fan) to a third person POV of a motorcycle messenger (Jia Hongsheng), about a quarter of the way through this 83 minute picture. The lives of these two characters intersect. Furthermore, Lou employs a hand held camera in a way that further obfuscates who is who and what is what. There is a time leap in the plot and, to cap things off, the two lead female characters are played by the same actress: the sublime Zhou Xun. 

However, the plot, which I will not reveal, is consistent with the often labyrinthian nature of mysteries and noir. The hand-held technique jibes with the gritty portrait of Shanghai's decayed industrial riverside. The performances are exemplary, particularly the doomed Mr. Jia who succumbed to inner demons in 2010. Suzhou River is a film that fully explores the fatalism inherent in the noir genre. A masterpiece that repays repeated viewings.