Suzhou River Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Suzhou River Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 2, 2023

Please note that this review includes minor spoilers.

Chinese writer/director Lou Ye is a member of his nation's Sixth Generation along with fellow filmmakers Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Jia Zhangke. Lou made a splash in 2000 when his second directed movie, Suzhou River, played along the the film-festival circuit. Works by Lou and his contemporaries are often characterized by issues related to national identity, characters struggling to fit into societal confines (frequently in urban environments), social decay, and economic liberalization. These topics are also central in Suzhou River where Lou uses the titular body of water that runs through Shanghai as a metaphor for the dreary city's decay.

The film is told from the perspective of a mostly unseen videographer, who advertises himself by spray-painting his contact info onto street walls. He has been mostly filming weddings so he's delighted to receive an interview from the manager of Happy Tavern, who wants the videographer to promote a new mermaid act within a large indoor aquarium. The film flashes back to the experiences of Mardar (Jia Hongsheng), a 26-year-old school drop-out who becomes a petty thief. Mardar purchases a stolen motorbike from one of his drifter friends he intermingles with by the river. He holds a relatively stable job as a courier courtesy of Xiao Hong (An Nai), a mysterious woman he meets in a bar who runs a barber shop. Through Xiao Hong's criminal contacts, she hooks Mardar up with a shady, well-off businessman who's also a smuggler. The latter hires Mardar to transport his 16-year-old daughter Moudan (Zhou Xun) over to her aunt's for a couple hours daily so he can entertain his female friends. Moudan is very smitten with Mardar and desperately wants him to return her affection, which initially is difficult. With her two ponytails, Moudan is cute but also incredibly naive. Mardar becomes involved in a scheme to kidnap Moudan and hold her captive in an abandoned apartment or warehouse until Xia-Ho and her boss, Lao B. (Hua Zhongkai), obtain the ransom money. Moudan is enraged that her would-be lover participated in such a plot, explaining to him that she's worth more than $45,000. She escapes and leads him to a bridge where she threatens to jump in the river and come back to haunt him. Moudan decides to go in the river but her body is never recovered.

Suzhou River flash-forwards to Marda getting out jail after serving a three-year sentence for his attempted crime. When Marda visits the Happy Tavern to makes an unsolicited visit the dressing room of Mei Mei (also portrayed by Zhou Xun), the mermaid performing in the aquarium, he believes she bears a striking resemblance to Moudan, even in her blonde wig. Marda develops a romantic obsession with Mei Mei even after she tells him that she's not actually Moudan.

Suzhou River was shot using a handheld camera and its filming style could not be more different than a Hitchcock picture. But Lou's movie stills shares an affinity with Vertigo (1958) since it also features a male character with an amorous infatuation with two ladies who look alike. In addition, portions of Jörg Lemberg's score seem to be patterned after the love theme Bernard Herrmann wrote for Scotty and Madeline. Suzhou River's shooting style reminds me a lot of the one employed in Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express (1994), which one can evince from the camera movement and mise-en-scène. Suzhou River is still an original work in its own right. It is a finely crafted picture, although I sometimes felt emotionally distant from the characters.

Suzhou River Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Suzhou River makes its global debut on Blu-ray courtesy of Strand Releasing. Before detailing the disc's technical presentation, it's necessary to elucidate and make corrections to errors on the keep case's back cover. Strand misleadingly states that this is a "4K BLU-RAY EDITION." This leads one to presume that this is an Ultra HD disc when in fact it's a standard Blu-ray (1920x1080). Strand also inaccurately prints the "Widescreen Aspect Ratio" as 2.35:1 when in fact it's 1.78:1. The other error Strand lists is English SDH. There are just basic English subtitles.
Also on the back cover is a section titled "About the Restoration":

The 4K digital restoration of the original version of SUZHOU RIVER was realized starting from the original 16mm A-B negative of the image from the laboratory Kopierwerk Babelsberg, supervised by director Lou Ye.
The image was scanned by screenshot AG Berlin, restoration at The Post Republic and color-graded by Moritz Peters. The titles were rebuilt by Mieke Ulfig.

I read through Strand's complete press booklet for the film's re-release and can provide additional details. Lou Ye was asked about the restoration in April 2022 by interviewer Wang Muyan and had this to say: "I've watched the footage sent by the post production studio and what had concerned me before was that the images could be restored to be overly clear; but it didn't happen. So, it is good...It is indeed a beautiful restoration." Lou's preference that the picture not appear "overly clear" signifies that he wanted to retain its original rough, textured, and gritty look. It maintains that appearance in this presentation.

My research indicates that the film's original aspect ratio is 1.85:1. Moreover, film critic Eternality Tan viewed Suzhou River at the National Museum of Singapore as part of the 2014 Perspectives Film Festival and listed that spherical ratio on his review page. Strand seems to have kept all of the image's dimensions intact, although they have opened it up to 1.78:1 on this transfer. I first watched this movie with a friend on his projection TV in the mid 2000s. He had the Artificial Eye DVD, which I remember being grainy. This new HD transfer is also grainy but has definite upticks in clarity and sharpness, particularly the close-ups. For example, see how clear Zhou Xun's moist face is in Screenshot #4. Also, observe how the bump in resolution from SD helps bring out the pockmarks in Jia Hongshen's face in frame grab #s 6 and 8. The first five minutes show various age-related artifacts as the videographer films around the titular river. Thankfully, those dissipate for much of the film's remainder but there are a couple of vertical tramlines you'll notice periodically towards the right edge of the frame (see Screenshot #14). This transfer does a faithful job of replicating a lot of the desaturated colors. Other colors are bright and neon. This other palette echoes the "lush" colors "saturated with evening yellows and reds, shabby industrial browns and a heightened, eerie night-club light effect" that critic Shelly Kraicer observed when she saw the film in April 2000 and wrote about it on her Chinese Cinema Page. Strand has made the curious decision of presenting the film at a resolution of 1080i, although the MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25 still carries a healthy standard video bitrate of 32944 kbps.

Eight chapters accompany the 79-minute feature.

Suzhou River Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Strand provides additional details about the audio restoration on the BD case's back cover:

The soundtrack was restored at Basis Berlin Postproduktion GmbH. New foleys were recorded by Fabian Weigmann and Jonathan Ritzel, the sound design was recreated and additional sound effects added by Sebastian Tesch. The Dolby 5.1 mix was mastered by Ansgar Frerich and Sebastian Tesch.

Ansgar Frerich is the Rerecording Mixer at Basis Berlin Postproduktion and expanded on this info in Strand's press booklet:

Working on SUZHOU RIVER was special, as I was able to communicate with Lou Ye and his assistant director Ying Li throughout the whole process. An opportunity like this sets a clear framework for the restoration. During these sessions, we generally discuss the director's approach, things they would have liked to do at the time of production but were not allowed or technically able to achieve. In terms of sound, spreading the mono signal from the original material into a 5.1 experience - which we did on SUZHOU RIVER - is nearly a pioneer's work. This calibre of sound restoration came up in the last ten years. In Germany, there might only be a dozen sound engineers working with that technique. Although Lou Ye was eager to create a 5.1 sound experience, he also insisted on keeping the roughness of the audio, and even some of the original sound mistakes for authenticity.
We made a point to not add any new sound or atmospheres to the film. Everything was extracted directly from the original material. It was a balance between repairing and reshaping.
Ying Li was here in the Berlin studio and in close contact with Lou Ye at all times. We would tweak the scenes and the sound together following the director's feedback before sending a playout for him to screen in China. He would then send us his feedback with a list of timecodes and suggested treatments. At the end of the process, he confirmed the restoration's sound stayed faithful to the original soundtrack.

The film's new DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround remix (3190 kbps, 24-bit) sounds even better than the video presentation looks. It does an excellent job of capturing the ambiance of Shanghai and sounds by the river. I could hear clearly the raindrops along the surround channels. The music by Jörg Lemberg reminds me a lot of Bernard Herrmann's string writing for Vertigo. Spoken words are delivered audibly and in sync with the actors' mouths, even though much of the dialogue was re-recorded in post.

The optional English subtitles are displayed in a white font that's clear and easy to read (see Screenshot #20).

Suzhou River Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1:40, 1080i) - Strand's trailer for the restored version of Suzhou River. It is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (640 kbps) in Mandarin (subtitled in English).

• Bonus Previews - trailers for Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (only available on DVD from Koch Lorber Films), Romance X (previously available on DVD from other labels), and Chan Is Missing (available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection).

Suzhou River Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I appreciated and liked Suzhou River more on this 4K-scanned transfer, which has been downsampled to 1080i on this Blu-ray, than I did when I watched the Artificial Eye PAL SD transfer nearly two decades ago with my friend. It's an imperfect restoration as there remains age-related blemishes on the image. I'm also surprised that Strand Releasing didn't give it a progressive encode. The newly created 5.1 track from the original monaural mix is even more impressive than the picture. Extras are nil, which is disappointing considering one would expect Strand could have at least recorded a new interview with Lou Ye or asked him to record a commentary. I would maybe wait for this to drop below $20 before considering a purchase. For fans of China's Sixth Generation of filmmakers, Suzhou River makes for a worthy addition to your collections.