★★★★Suzhou River has a couple of very strong points going for it. For one, its plot seems straightforward at first but soon becomes complicated with stories within stories while one actress plays the female lead in all of them. I enjoyed this story as it got more and more complicated and, instead of ending, took one more narrative turn. After its somewhat slow beginning, Suzhou River quickly reeled me in. I also liked the film’s setting along the Suzhou River in Shanghai. This is a dirty, misty, industrial, rainy, humid environment – the environment good noir. I don’t believe I’ll ever think of Shanghai in the same way after watching this film. Like in African Queen, the setting here is as much a character as any of the people are.
There were some elements of the movie that I didn’t really care for, though. For one, there’s a voiceover narration throughout the film, and I have a knee-jerk bias against that. I wish the film could just tell the story with images, but I don’t know how Ye could have done that here. However, he could have done it more, for sure. I was slightly disappointed in the way the ending ties up all the ends in the plot and gives us a definitive interpretation of what has happened, too. The film could have stopped a little earlier and left us with several interesting ways of thinking about what we’d seen, but it goes on to tell us what to think. And along with the voiceover, a lot of Suzhou River uses a subjective point of view with a wobbly, hand held camera that grows a little old after awhile; and I got impatient with the voiceover and the takes of life along the river at the film’s opening. I still don’t get how all that fits….
These reservations aside, there’s a lot to like in Suzhou River. It’s worth the time as a unique vision of a unique place.
