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Purple Butterfly(紫蝴蝶)

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China, France · 2003
Rated R · 2h 7m
Director Lou Ye
Starring Zhang Ziyi, Liu Ye, Yuanzheng Feng, Toru Nakamura
Genre War, Drama, History

Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.

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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

Variety by Derek Elley

An often remarkable, often infuriating lateral spin on genre material that desperately needs another sesh at the editing table.

80

L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor

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

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.

75

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

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.

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