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Purple Butterfly

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 12 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 4 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Ye Lou
Directed by: Ye Lou
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 26, 2004
DVD: February 15, 2005
Running Time: 127 minutes, Color
Origin: China / France
Language(s): Mandarin / Japanese / Vietnamese (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence and a scene of sexuality
Starring Ziyi Zhang, Ye Liu, Yuanzheng Feng, Tôru Nakamura, Bingbing Li, and Kin Ei
An epic tale of doomed passion, mistaken identity and the terrible personal cost of political resistance. (Palm Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Summer Palace Suzhou River
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Los Angeles Times 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
Read Full Review >LA Weekly 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.
Read Full Review >The New York Times 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.
Read Full Review >New York Post 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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Too often, Purple Butterfly is as impenetrable as Zhang's placid, obdurate beauty.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer 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.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
An often remarkable, often infuriating lateral spin on genre material that desperately needs another sesh at the editing table.
Read Full Review >TV Guide 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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Peter Alan R. gave it a10:
An excitingly different, beautiful and subtle approach to making a film, which will probably alienate many of its viewers. A major step into new and unkown-to-me territory, I was immediately seduced and viscerally delighted. I was smiling in the dark.
Brian P gave it a9:
Dude below has no idea what the movie was about, thus his childlike response. Either that, or the issues latent in the historical and easily transferrable political subtext of the film are too painful for him to confront. TV Guide, Variety, and Seattle PI don't get it either. Their difficulty is with the twists in the plot. They fail to understand this twists because they are ignorant of the subtext that drives the film. The world is missing little by not having them and the first poster understand the film. Indeed, maybe the directors expect that, given the ending.
Chad S. gave it a1:
Boring and poorly acted.
