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Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly 191narrator’s story can be accepted at face value. On the other hand, PurpleButterfly relies heavily on visual cues rather than verbal ones for narration.Therefore, audiences have to generate information on their own in ordercomprehend a movie filled with gaps. Also, Purple Butterfly does not relyon a diegetic narrator to tell its story, and the entire movie is comprisedof non-focalized shots.Suzhou RiverSuzhou River grew out of Lou Ye’s work as a producer on the Super Citytelevision series during the mid-1990s. Lou planned to contribute twosegments, but he ran out of money. After receiving completion fundsfrom European sources, Lou created an 82-minute feature film that combinedthe two scripts (Silbergeld 2004, pp. 45, 121). At the 2000 Viennale(Vienna International Film Festival), Suzhou River won the FIPRESCIPrize “for its realistic and documentary approach to thriller conventions,and its expressive use of narrative and cinematic structure” (FIPRESCI).Suzhou River has four main characters: Mada (Jia Hongsheng), Mudan(Zhou Xun), Meimei (Zhou Xun again), and an unseen narrator (voicedby Lou Ye), who is a videographer. 2 Mada and Mudan represent one pairof lovers, and Meimei and the narrator another pair. Mada is a courier whofrequently chauffeurs Mudan from place to place. Mudan disappears afterMada kidnaps her for ransom. 3 A few years later, Mada thinks that Meimeiis Mudan. Meimei appears to be the “wrong woman,” pursued by Mada.The double pursuit involves Mada trying to find Mudan while the narratorand Meimei attempt to determine if Mada is telling the truth. Initially,Mada believes that the other characters are in a conspiracy to hide Meimei’s“real” identity, and the narrator wonders if Meimei and Mada are playinggames with him. Mudan and Meimei are the obvious examples of mistakenidentities, though the movie’s suggestion that the narrator and Mada arethe same person is also a case of mistaken identity.Suzhou River has a bookend structure. However, the movie is not asimple A-B-A construct with clearly demarcated ends and beginnings. Themovie intentionally conflates the past and the present to emphasize the fourmain characters’ similarities as well as the confusion that they feel abouttheir own identities after meeting each other.The movie can be divided into seven segments. Segment 1 (0:00:00–0:03:52) includes the opening credits, which appear on a black background.