Popular reviews

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  Review by harryblarr ★★★★½ 20

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  A story of a teenager who likes fapping and Suzhou River. (not my review)

  I was 17 during 2007, just got on my first senior year. The raddest book I've ever read was entire work collection of Gu Long. I was a r****d, and of course still is a r****d. Just like every other countryside self-deprecating, wretched, mess around, waiting to die teenager, friendless and nothing to be happy of, I feel as if my life will stay this way forever.

  A schoolmates of mine told me there was a film called Suzhou River, and it was banned by China. Back at the days my idea of a banned film is that these films are good wanking materials, so I…

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  Review by Waqar ★★★★★ 4

  Much like the opening sequence, I found myself drifting through the film as if i was a passenger on the boat. Enveloped by a myriad of emotions and in a constant state of observation at all the transient and ephemeral moments of love, loneliness and tragedy unfolding in front of me, all amidst the backdrop of a far slower societal change. There's hue's of Kar-Wai here, the dream-like quality, except it's a portrait of the grittier side of Shanghai at the dawn of the millennia that's on display. 

  Not just a sombre and atmospheric melodrama, there's a unique sense of intricacy that's gone into making this. I'm surprised this film isn't more popular, it's genuinely a masterful piece of work. Lou Ye is criminally under-appreciated.

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  Review by Christina ★★★★ 4

  “it’s the filthiest river, with an eternity’s worth of stories and rubbish.”

  a time stamped love story to the ever-changing landscape of shanghai, suzhou river is a dreamy concoction of hitchcockian mystery and wong kar-wai’s aesthetics. showing a different narrative of chinese cinema than the previous generation of filmmakers, lou ye ignites a melancholic spark in the urban grit of the city’s margins. 

  shaking with frenzied camera movements and nonlinear plot lines that eventually stream in sorrow, ye blurs the boundaries of real and imagination. our picture concentrates on the eruptive relationships of a criminal motorcycle courier, a vodka business owner’s eccentric daughter, an alluring nightclub dancer and the unseen, unreliable narrator. zhou xun, delivers a captivating performance in her dual…

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★ 6

  Love is a nightless city. Suzhou Ricer is a story of love told in industrial backstreets. It's about ugly love, of warm tears and unromantic encounters. Characters wait for the next love story to begin, their lives intersecting as they want to become part of a romance adventure. Suzhou River is strange and mysterious, featuring an unseen protagonist and repeated characters. Stylistically it has an avant-garde streak of jump cuts and POV shots, and thematically it's a little Wong Kar-wai and a little Alfred Hitchcock. All of which swirls into a distinct film nonetheless. Suzhou River is a film where love is either temporary or you die with your lover. It's beauty amongst the pain, the story of a beautiful mermaid swimming in a dirty river.

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  Review by nadine smith ★★★★

  this has the best karaoke scene of any movie ever

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  Review by Ayush ★★★★ 21

  Of ethereal motorcycle rides and vodka; doomed love in the grimy urban wasteland. Lost, lonesome souls barely managing to exist in the crooked periphery of urban dwellings, desperately holding on to the human touch. Love is a nightless city.

  A dreamy haze of betrayal, regret and obsession. A love that ends before it ever got to begin; cheated out of the only paradisiacal element in this fatally lifeless existence by ill-advised deeds in search for material gain. The gnawing lament doesn't let go.

  A new face, the same face. Mesmerized by a woman that transcends mere humanity and seamlessly traverses into the realm of fantasy. Equal parts fixation on the concept of love and the remorse that lingers and eats away at one's skin and soul. When the time finally comes, would you immortalise your love or drift along dusty roads in search of it for as long as you live?

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  Review by Wes ★★★★½

  "every time she closed the door behind her, i felt as if my life had stopped."

  employs a variety of narrative and technological tricks to perfectly capture the unreliability of memory and the pain of lost love thats foundations are built on illusion.

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  Review by emma katharine ★★★★★ 7

  to the friend who unknowingly baited me into watching this, you the real mvp.

  a dream within a dream, the quiet buzz of the vcr in between dimensions, a love that punches time in the jaw and dares it to get up for another round.

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  Stories one disappears into.

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  Review by aysenur🫧 ★★★★

  “Find me if you love me.”

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  Review by nick ★★★

  Suzhou River is a fantastical yet grim tale of two lonely souls connecting and falling out. Against the backdrop of a heavily polluted Suzhou River, which millions of people live by and live off of, this movie manages to find beauty via the most mundane existence, and elevate it with a folklore twist.

  Suzhou River starts with haunting track shots of the titular river, with documentary-styled presentation as well as a somber voiceover to point out the backstory as well as a hint of the hidden connections between the protagonists and the river. Then we're introduced to a crime-riddled modern Chinese love story, where lust and money gets in the way of pure connection in a material, fast-moving Shanghai. The…

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  Review by reibureibu ★★★★½

  Gauzy romantic feelings. Urban pollution. Muddled identities and criminal activities. Suzhou River melds together elements of many different influences yet still remains staunchly itself; that's because all these elements are connected to the core of our protagonist, a dual narrator-character who guides us anonymously as we never see his face nor learn his name – rather, we share his perspective literally through his eyes.

  This unnamed man is a videographer and thus already throws the film's narrative into a curated one. Often we can see his hands on-screen, picking things up or lighting cigarettes, and so presumably we might see these sequences as part of his 'filming'. But then so too do other sequences that don't involve him carry his…