WNDX Open Call 4: Horror Landscape
Pay What You Can
Dir. Lou Ye
2000, China, 83 min
Chinese with English subtitles
Along the banks of the Suzhou River, which winds precariously through Shanghai, Marda (Jia Hongshen) falls in love with a dramatically beautiful young woman named Moudan (Zhou Xun). When he tries to kidnap her in order to demand ransom money from her rich father, she escapes him, jumping into the river and disappearing forever. Marda serves a three-year jail sentence for his attempted crime. Upon his release, he meets a woman that looks exactly like Moudan, named MeiMei (also played by Zhou Xun).
An exciting, action-filled mystery suspense movie, director Lou Ye’s Suzhou River shares many thematic and stylistic elements with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
“It’s hard not to be swept up by the strong current of Suzhou River: a seductive and atmospheric conundrum that works pleasingly as an exercise in storytelling.” – Lizzie Francke, Sight and Sound
