100
A gorgeously shot, ambitious epic.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
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.
50
An often remarkable, often infuriating lateral spin on genre material that desperately needs another sesh at the editing table.
80
Hectic, lyrical, swooningly romantic and almost unwatchably brutal, Purple Butterfly deploys a modern Asian gangster-movie aesthetic to tell a love story of Shakespearean dimensions.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
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
58
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Too often, Purple Butterfly is as impenetrable as Zhang's placid, obdurate beauty.
50
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
The effect is hypnotically disorienting, but the less familiar you are with this period in 20th-century Chinese history, the easier it is to get hopelessly lost in the tangle of personal and political loyalties and betrayals.
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
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.
38
Ye bites off substantially more than he can chew.
75
Director Lou Ye, who gave us the lilting "Suzhou River," doesn't care much for dialogue. He lets Wang Yu's pulsating camerawork do the talking.