Review of Suzhou River

The film starts with a black screen with voice over of two lovers talking to each other which, to some extent, reminded me of the opening scene of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). The black screen gradually turns into dirty water of Suzhou River, a tracking shot from a boat shows us the old industrial buildings around the river, people, ships and the filthy river (as the narrator calls it) itself. Cold colors like blue and green are most obvious ones in this sequence but grey is dominating the whole scene, perhaps emphasizing on filthiness of the river. The scene is shot with a hand-held camera but we are not seeing through the narrator's eyes, we are seeing through his own camera, and it's differentiated from his own POV shots (that we will see a lot later in the film) through the use of zoom and jerky turns and sudden cuts in this scene. This is not a movie with linear storyline and this is a different time line from the prologue conversation, it's the latest and the current time line of the film, and all others are prior to it. We even hear the ending of the movie in the beginning from the narrator: "I saw bodies of two lovers being dragged near the river by the police." After the movie title comes up the narrator starts introducing himself to us through his own voice and eyes, now we have POV shots from the narrator himself. He uses past tense verbs so it's clear that we are again in a different time line from the previous scene. Also in the bar, we don't see everything the boss tells the narrator because of multiple jump cuts and finally he tells us himself that the guy wanted him to shoot his mermaid show. And this is the standard of the movie in early scenes; we don't usually hear characters talking, instead the narrator tells us what they said. The narrator goes on in the same time line to meet Meimei, the "mermaid". Here there are information that will make us confused later on about Meimei's real identity like that the narrator didn't know anything about her past, that she suddenly disappeared for days and that she was a "mermaid". As the narrator is telling us about Mardar and looking out of his apartment's window, we see a girl with ponytails and a guy on a motorcycle among the crowd and then there is a cut to medium shot of the guy on the bike, who is Mardar and that was the transition between two different time lines. The camera isn't the narrator's POV shot anymore and we begin to hear him less and less in the following parts. There is a shot in Mardar's back story where we slowly zoom in to a light bulb in his room and then cut to a sunny exterior shot which resembles of the iconic match to sun cut in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). As Moudan enters the story, there are some changes in cinematography; the camera gradually comes off-hand and goes on tripod, we start to see shots where camera is placed behind Mardar's shoulder whenever he is following Moudan (or in a later scene Meimei). When Moudan and Mardar are riding on the bike, we see them from the front; they can't see each other but we see both their face Moudan is happy and cheerful and we get a close-up to emphasize that in her face but Mardar seems emotionless! This kind of staging and camera position happens again with Moudan and Mardar at his apartment and also with Mardar and the criminal woman. We are used to seeing Mardar and Moudan close together when they are in a shot; either riding on his bike or cuddling at his apartment so it stands out when they are each on one end of the frame in a long shot where Mardar is taking her as a hostage to get money from her father. Their emotional distance is conveyed through their physical distance in this scene. Later parts of the film the camera goes hand-held again and we have the narrator's POV shots again, the narrator who is supposedly the only one left from the film. Interior shots are usually full of yellow, either yellowish props or a yellow beam of light. Also the night scene with Mardar Meimei and Mardar is unusually blue but still has yellowish interiors. Exteriors (which are almost all around the river) have pale, grayish colors with low contrast and foggy weather (that causes a strong aerial perspective) probably caused by fumes of the industrial buildings surrounding the river. This overall setting gives the exterior shots a sick and somber feeling that reminds of that of the opening shots of Red Desert (1964). Also Mardar's obsession with Moudan and similarities of Moudan and Meimei reminded me of Vertigo (1958).