Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a ...
See full summary »
Yu Hong leaves her home village and starts university in Beijing, where she develops a consuming and compulsive relationship with another student. The student riots from 1989 then ensue and take a toll on their lives.
Lu Jie is having coffee with her desperate friend Sang Qi, who believes her husband is cheating on her. At the same time at a hotel across the road from the coffee shop, Lu Jie sees her ... See full summary »
The river Suzhou that flows through Shanghai is a reservoir of filth, chaos and poverty, but also a meeting place for memories and secrets. Lou Ye, who spent his youth on the banks of the ... See full summary »
Hired to spy on a philandering husband, Luo Haitao soon becomes entangled in a clandestine affair with the other man. Along with Luo's girlfriend, they succumb to the delirium of drunken nights, but how long can their tryst last?
In Paris, the Chinese university student Hua is dumped by her lover. Hua wanders on the streets and the French worker Mathieu accidentally hits her face with the pipes that he is carrying ... See full summary »
Between the heaven and the Earth exist the Zu's mountain range, where live the immortals of Omei, the highest mountain of Zu, but the kingdom is in danger by Amnesia, a renegade immortal ... See full summary »
A provincial boy related to a Shanghai crime family is recruited by his uncle into cosmopolitan Shanghai in the 1930s to be a servant to a ganglord's mistress.
A loose adaptation of Hamlet, "The Night Banquet" is set in an empire in chaos. The Emperor, the Empress, the Crown Prince, the Minister and the General all have their own enemies they would like to finish off at a night banquet.
Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.Written by
Anonymous
The Moon Of A Garden Bridge
Music by Shigeru Tamura
Lyrics by Sônosuke Satô
Performed by Utako Matsushima
Courtesy of King Record Company Co. Ltd. See more »
Lethargic direction ruins an otherwise compelling period story that stars the wondrous Zhang Ziyi, in an excellent role as a woman who joins an extremist group in 1928 China, just prior to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and reunites with a former lover who is now working for Japan. Every bit of drama and forward motion of the story is sucked dry by director Ye Lou's somnambulist directorial style. Characters stand still staring at each other for long minutes, saying nothing, hand-held cameras hold forever on faces showing interminable reactions way longer than they need to, edits repeat the same reaction is triple redundancy. We know nothing about the characters as the story begins and are given little new information as the story progresses, only silence and static shots of lovers who don't speak, who interaction through silent dances but share no apparent emotional intimacy. A very sleep inducing film.
8 of 14 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
Lethargic direction ruins an otherwise compelling period story that stars the wondrous Zhang Ziyi, in an excellent role as a woman who joins an extremist group in 1928 China, just prior to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and reunites with a former lover who is now working for Japan. Every bit of drama and forward motion of the story is sucked dry by director Ye Lou's somnambulist directorial style. Characters stand still staring at each other for long minutes, saying nothing, hand-held cameras hold forever on faces showing interminable reactions way longer than they need to, edits repeat the same reaction is triple redundancy. We know nothing about the characters as the story begins and are given little new information as the story progresses, only silence and static shots of lovers who don't speak, who interaction through silent dances but share no apparent emotional intimacy. A very sleep inducing film.