Chinese
director Lou Ye's Suzhou He (Suzhou River),
which will be presented at the European Film Market by
French-German producer Philippe Bober of Berlin's Coproduction
Office, won one of the three VPRO Tiger Awards at the
29th International Film Festival Rotterdam,
which ended last week (Saturday, 5 February).
The
other two Tigers, worth $25,000 each, went to Argentine
director Pablo Trapero's Mundo Grúa
(Crane World) which also bagged the FIPRESCI
award and Faroese director Katrin Ottarsdóttir's
Bye Bye Blue Bird.
Registered
as a Chinese entry, Suzhou He which
has been invited to festivals in Edinburgh, Brügge,
Karlovy Vary, Moscow and Hong Kong, is in fact flying
a flag of convenience. After meeting censorship problems
with his previous two films, Ye shot Suzhou He
with no obstacles from the authorities because
it was listed as a television production.
"If
you want to make a feature, you have to submit the script
for approval," explains Bober. "For television films,
however, you only apply for a shooting permit, without
having your project scrutinised. We got ours from the
Shanghai Film Studio.
"As
a result, it is not a Chinese film and, with no official
country of origin, it cannot be registered as a German
co-production. Since it doesn't have a German or European
director, it does not qualify as a German production
either, which made German public funding inaccessible.
"So
Suzhou He is a rather stateless creature.
But it does not seem to keep distributors away."
Described
as 'an intriguing love story set against Shanghai's
petty criminals, far from the tourist image of China',
Suzhou He follows the misadventures of
a motorcycle courier in his mid-twenties who is asked
to deliver the 16-year-old daughter of a smuggler to
her aunt.
They
fall in love, but as she thinks he has kidnapped her
for a ransom, she jumps into the river. He is jailed
for murder, but after his release he meets a dancer
who turns out to be the girl's alter ego.
