Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 20
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 11
Ye Lou's Purple Butterfly is atmospheric and moody, but the story is frustratingly muddled.
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 4
Ye Lou's Purple Butterfly is atmospheric and moody, but the story is frustratingly muddled.
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Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 1,318
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Directed by Lou Ye, Zi Hudie revolves around the underground faction of anti-Nipponese fighters in 1930s Shanghai, just prior to the onset of the Sino-Japanese war. It's only the beginning when Cynthia (Zhang Ziyi), a young Chinese woman, learns the news of her lover Itami's (Toru Nakamura) rapidly approaching return to the military. In a second and even more devastating blow, Cynthia's brother, a contributor to an anti-Japanese newspaper, is killed by a Japanese activist. Three years later,
Nov 26, 2004 Wide
Feb 15, 2005
Palm Pictures
All Critics (24) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (9) | Rotten (12) | DVD (6)
At the center of it all is, of course, Zhang. Charismatic and intense, she excels in her most grown-up role to date.
There are two movies battling for supremacy in Butterfly, and both lose. As does the audience.
As atmospheric and moody as a film noir, the stylish, sometimes perplexing Purple Butterfly is a remarkable period piece, evoking the bustling, dense and increasingly dangerous Shanghai of the '30s.
Mr. Lou synthesizes a wide range of styles and influences -- from Casablanca to Wong Kar-wai -- resulting in a movie that, for all its haunting strangeness, seems curiously familiar.
Throughout, Zhang emotes like Bette Davis.
Too often, Purple Butterfly is as impenetrable as Zhang's placid, obdurate beauty.
The plot may be a little hard to follow, but the film-making is skillful and any effort on the viewer's part is well worth it
Strictly for card-carrying members of the Zhang Ziyi Fan Club.
Just like nuclear energy, long cinematic pauses can be used properly for the benefit of all, while in the wrong hands they can cause mass misery.
An at times pretty but nonetheless forgettable film.
A gorgeous period melodrama, packed with romantic tragedy and violent intrigue, it is both gritty and dreamy, political and personal.
Hectic, lyrical, swooningly romantic and almost unwatchably brutal.
... rich with emotional turmoil and searing beauty, but it could have used a little more time in the editing room to make sense of it all.
The art of it is entirely in the atmospherics; the rest is melodrama. Its 127 minute exercise in puzzle solving is draining.
The characters are less compelling than this particular slice of history, which has rarely been dramatized in movies.
Give in to the mood piece and bathe in its glamorous nostalgic glow. It's a beauty.
Purple Butterfly is quite an interesting watch. It isn't interesting in the way where the story just knocks your socks off or where the film just spans many genres. This is a straight up Chinese gangster drama with a different way of telling the story.This film is almost like a silent picture. The dialogue is down
September 25, 2008
Super Reviewer
[font=Century Gothic]Absolutely incoherent film about Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and Shanghai in 1927 and 1931. Now, that's the part that I understood. Anything involving specific characters, or more precisely who was shooting at whom while at the same time carrying on love affairs with
December 14, 2004Super Reviewer
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