"Actor: Hongshen Jia"

• Suzhou River | DVD | (08/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A film from China directed by Lou Ye, Suzhou River is a story of doomed romantic love very different from the social realism of many contemporary Chinese films. Set in modern Shanghai, it's about Mardar, a motorcycle courier who gets involved with Moudan, the daughter of a businessman. When she learns he's implicated in a scheme to kidnap her, she jumps off a bridge into the river. Devastated, Mardar refuses to believe Moudan has drowned and eventually thinks he's found her, now performing a mermaid act in a sleazy bar. But the narrator of the story tells him she's Meimei, another woman. Which of them is right? The story has strong echoes of the Hitchcock classic Vertigo, in which James Stewart searches for his lost love. Stylishly shot, teasingly told, this is an intriguing film with a melancholy ending, though Zhou Xun, who plays both female parts, doesn't quite have the charisma of Vertigo's Kim Novak. --Ed Buscombe