Suzhou River (2000)

"There's a century worth of stories here and rubbish which makes it the filthiest river"

Suzhou River was a breakout role for Zhou Xun. She won the Paris Film Fest and Chinese Film Media awards for Best Actress. For her co-star Jia Hong Sheng it was a comeback film after a long battle with drug addiction and mental illness. I had mixed reactions to the blurring of reality and fantasy in this story set along the Suzhou River.

A narrator voices his story of struggling to find work as a videographer in the rundown area around the Suzhou River. One night in a seamy bar he’s asked to video the mermaid swimming on display. The mermaid, Mei Mei, and the narrator begin a relationship marred by her moments of sadness and random disappearances. She mentions the tragic love story of Mardar and Mu Dan and would he search for her forever as Mardar did for the missing Mu Dan. Thus begins the story of the doomed lovers.

I enjoyed the first half of the film more than the second half. In the first half it was distracting that the narrator continually inserted into the story comments that it was only a story and he was making it up as he went along. It was very hard for me to connect with characters when I was narratively jostled about. But at least the lovers’ story held some interest as two disaffected people finding a connection. The second half when the narrator became so enamored with his creations that he inserted himself into the story dragged it down for me, especially the enigmatic ending. By that point I didn’t care about any of them and their heartbreak and sense of loss became meaningless.

Zhou Xun did a splendid job playing two different characters. My biggest problem was that Mu Dan was supposed to be a teenager which made her relationship with Mardar on the icky side as Jia had a hardened adult face and Mardar had an adult criminal job. The narrator knew nothing about his girlfriend, Mei Mei, which meant the audience didn’t either. We never see the narrator. He and his camera are the observers. Scenes through the camera’s POV were very shaky, a style that makes me rather nauseated.

Aside from the shaky camera issues, the color scheme was often gray and even blurred as if watching through too much smog. Or like an old scratchy film never lovingly restored. The music at least effectively matched the scenes and emotions.

As I watched this film repeatedly being pulled out of the characters’ world by the narrator, I couldn’t help but wonder if the story would have felt more cohesive and compelling if the director had told the story straight instead of bouncing around in time and between reality and fantasy. It was hard to care about people who were constantly described through the lens of urban legend and then blended with a lonely storyteller’s life.

20 July 2025

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