The Butterfly Effect

Zhang Ziyi looks as beautiful as ever in Purple Butterfly, a film that takes her out of the martial-arts world of Hero and House of Flying Daggers. She plays a member of Purple Butterfly, an underground resistance group fighting against the Japanese aggression in early-1930s China. The movie's central dilemma comes when her ex-lover, a Japanese agent (Toru Nakamura), returns to Shanghai and is earmarked for assassination by Purple Butterfly. This compelling-sounding set-up is frustratingly unfulfilled, as director Ye Lou (Shuzou River) opts for an opaque brand of storytelling, in which chronology is jumbled and drama short-circuited. The film looks gorgeous, but it is close to impossible to understand what is going on at any given moment. If handsome images and dreamlike editing are enough, the movie might work for a very select group of patient viewers and Zhang Ziyi fanatics. --Robert Horton