Borboleta Púrpura

While the story might give one an eye sore and a headache having to keep up with the multiple characters in the storyline, there is an air of independent film-making that transcends the film's confusion. One should also note how excellent the camera-work is for those who enjoy the Italian Neo-realist films of the 1940's and 50's.

This film is perhaps one of the most interesting of films on Chinese history told from the perspective of the Chinese themselves. The background, actors, crowded train stations and gunfights, would seem difficult to recreate in an independent film. However, the director succeeds in creating 1930's Japanese occupied Shanghai and how war affects those who are involved, both politically & non-politically. For anyone who hasn't seen a film from China other than the heavily laden Kung Fu movies made here in the U.S., Purple Butterfly is both a refresher and an excellent look at Neo-Realism in Chinese Cinema today.

There are a few things director Ye Lou likes more than I do: silent, open-mouthed screams, rain and quick dissolves. His movie Purple Butterfly is composed mainly of these things, with glimpses in-between of a story about two lovers caught up in the Japanese occupation of Manchuria during the '30s.

I know what I'm supposed to think of this movie: it's a tone-poem, an evocation of some deeper mood, something running below the surface of the action. But I can't help feeling that the whole exercise would've been more worthwhile had the director demonstrated less ambition and more good old-fashioned story-sense.

There are these two people, one a Chinese woman working for the underground, the other a Japanese fellow toiling for his country's secret-service. We know they're lovers because we see them in bed together, but for at least half the movie, we have no real idea who these people are, what their roles are in the drama that appears to be playing out before us. Now, I'm no dummy, and certainly don't require everything to be spelled-out for me in the dopey terms of most Hollywood movies, but I do appreciate it when the director makes at least a cursory effort at filling me in on the details of the story, like who people are and why I should care about them.

The movie doesn't let you get a food-hold, it's too busy being poetic and rainy and surpassingly glum. This might be all right if the images had some great plastic beauty, but the blue-toned pictures Ye Lou puts in front of us, dissolving from one to the next like he's putting on a museum slide-show of Chinese history, are not exactly the best eye-candy I've seen lately. As an exercise in image and cutting the film is not hall-of-fame material.

The stuff of good cinema is there in Purple Butterfly, but it's buried under too many layers of Cinema.

Purple Butterfly began in silence, a risky one at that. It relied on the gestures of the actors/actresses, the jumpcuts, and the hand-held camera-work, reminiscent of early Italian Neo-Realism and/or Cassevettes, to begin the story. I have to admit that I dozed off somewhere within the first 30 min., but that was mainly due to my lack of sleep. Nevertheless, I was anxious for the ending of the film.

I enjoyed the cinematography, the acting style, the editing, the music, and the mixing of genres. It's like an epic espionage war love story, the likes of a collaboration between Hitchcock and Truffuat. There was some poetic scenes, and suspenseful ones as well. The main problem I had was the narrative structure which seemed confusing to me. It also didn't flow well together. Somewhere during the middle of the film, it becomes non-linear without warning me.

In conclusion, I give the movie a B-. It is definitely worth seeing and may will be a very historic film in regards to its film language in years to come.

Purple Butterfly has a chaotic editing style and claustrophobic cinematography. The story line cuts back in forth from the past to the present and is hard to follow. The scenes are rainy and blurred and the cinematographer's choice of lens made some of the action blurred. This all makes Purple Butterfly seem like a bad movie, but it is suitable to the mood and story being told. Purple Butterfly is dramatic and experimental in its ways and was one of the best films at Cannes Film Festival.

Sixth Generation Chinese director Ye Lou's visually stunning revolutionary romance "Purple Butterfly" is set in Japanese occupied Manchuria in the 1930's and for the first 45 minutes or so you may find it impossible to figure out who's who or what's going on, (I certainly did). Lou uses hand-held cameras to dizzying effect and shoots mostly in various shades of blue and with an awful lot of rain. What is clear is there is an underground organization, (the Purple Butterfly), dedicated to fighting the Japanese and that there's a traitor in their midst. Otherwise the plot is reasonably complex and the time structure not always clear while a case of mistaken identity does little to help. Nevertheless, trying to put the pieces together in some kind of logical order turns out to be hugely rewarding and, as I've said, it's visually magnificent with superb performances from the entire cast. Inevitably it will remind you of the cinema of Kar-Wai Wong but Ye Lou remains his own man and even if you need to see this a couple of times to 'get it' it will be time well spent.