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Starring: Zhou Xun, Jia Hongsheng

Directed By: Lou Ye

It is really time for us to explore more of what a non linear narrative can do to a story. We are not sure what we need to take from this movie on the basis of content. But the director wants us distance from the story as much as possible. He tries to give us a story by the middle of the film but we are not sure if these are only things that he has been cooking up as a filmmaker.

Lou Ye doesn’t seem to go with dictates of film making. He is more of a drifter like the river itself. His camera moves like the river covering the city with some interesting jump cuts. But it is surely going to be difficult for many people to follow the plot of the movie. But that is where many of the secrets of the film are revealed. He uses motifs of mermaid that are not Chinese but more international sort widening his appeal. I like the way he makes uses the scenes from the beginning of the movie and cleverly adds them in the end with some slick editing. He doesn’t try to reveal much but he himself plays a doppelganger of the character and this is something not scene in cinema.

His idea of a man totally fascinated by a woman who is totally out of his reach is sort of an archaic concept. But it is the way he takes the concept and cleverly incorporates ideas of identity crisis. Every character has something to look out for in this movie. The sadness of most of the characters is digressions of what the truth really is.

There are loads of interconnections of stories because of mistaken identities that make for very interesting viewing. But most of the ideas are still in their nascent stages. He doesn’t really want to develop on them and that is one of the strengths of the film. It gives us so much room for interpretation. It feels like we are watching several multiple stories but that is also a clever use of the editing. It is a scenario in which the director is so in love with the characters that he wants to mingle with them. The director is playing the role of God that is something that will make you feel a little uncomfortable.

Some more interesting features of the movie are the use of time and voice overs. You are really sucked into what the director wants to emphasis and left with alot of background story that you might just miss. This is a startling feature that all of the stories have times in which they flow into each other like the Suzhou River.