Reception
With the success of Lou's previous film, Suzhou River (2000), Purple Butterfly was an anticipated follow up with a considerably larger budget. The film received polarizing receptions. Rotten Tomatoes records a 45% "rotten" rating with a slightly better "Cream of the Crop" rating of 50%. Metacritic records the film received a 68 score out of 100, meaning "generally favorable reviews."
G. Allen Johnson of The San Francisco Chronicle describes the film as "a gorgeously shot, ambitious epic." Kevin Thomas of The Los Angeles Times called the film: "a remarkable period piece, evoking the bustling, dense and increasingly dangerous Shanghai of the '30s." Thomas praised Zhang as an actress with "formidable resources" and "has that crucial gift of holding herself in check at just the right moments for maximum dramatic impact and psychological complexity." Thomas further state the film is "suspenseful, atmospheric and sometimes puzzling."
However, other critics saw the film as technically masterful but a case where style had trumped substance. In particular the film's labyrinthine and difficult to follow plot was pointed to as a major point of complaint. One such review by Sean Axmaker of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called the film "lush but confusing", and states "Purple Butterfly is 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."
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