Saturday Fiction
From 1937 to 1941, Shanghai was dubbed a "solitary island" in that, alone in China after the Japanese invasion, there were areas within it that were under international control, namely the French and British Concessions. They were, undoubtedly, teeming with spies and collaborators and double agents, but it strains credibility that they could have been anything like as fraught and riven as the French-administered enclave in the 1941 of Sixth Generation Chinese director Lou Ye 's grandiloquently incoherent misfire "Saturday Fiction. " Starring/wasting the luminous Gong Li, the black and white film strays further away from the observational art-house calm of Lou's 2014 "Blind Massage, " and plows deeper into the tangled thickets of dubious motivation and incomprehensible behavior that marred his last film, police procedural "The Shadow Play. " It takes some time to work out what on earth is going on, largely because of Lou's most confusing and counterproductive decision, which is to leadenly attempt a metafictional approach, whereby sometimes we're in the film's story, and sometimes in the story of the play-within-the-film.
Saturday fiction chinese movie
The black and white cinematography captures and frames the period so well, " said Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing. The deal was done between Jon Gerrans of Strand Releasing and Eva Diederix of Wild Bunch, with the cooperation of CAA Media Finance. "We are thrilled to be back in business with Strand, a dedicated and talented distributor committed to Lou Ye's films. I trust our film has found the right home with them, " said Diederix. Strand Releasing plans for a fall release that will mark the 20th Anniversary of the release of "Suzhou River. " Theaters are currently shuttered in most cities across the U. S. "We wish them all the best in presenting 'Saturday Fiction' to the American audiences returning to cinemas in the near future and hope that they will embrace the film as they have all of his previous work, " said Ma Yingli, producer at Yingfilms. "Saturday Fiction" marks Lou's follow up to the police procedural "The Shadow Play. " The L. A. -based Strand Releasing recently celebrated its 30th Anniversary with a national tour showcasing films created for the occasion.
In 1941, a Chinese actress returns to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, ostensibly to star in a play, but her true motivations become complicated as she learns of the imminent Pearl Harbor attack and struggles to differentiate friend from undercover enemy. The latest film from master Sixth Generation director Lou Ye — last at the Festival with 2011's Love and Bruises — takes us back to wartime Shanghai for a sweeping tale of intrigue. Featuring an alluringly mysterious central performance from the great Gong Li ( Raise the Red Lantern), Saturday Fiction is a study in role play in which the stakes are vertiginously high. It is December 1941, and Shanghai has been under Japanese occupation for four years. Since the outbreak of war in Europe two years earlier, it has become a hotbed of intelligence gathering for both the Axis and Allied powers. The celebrated actor Jean Yu (Gong) has just arrived from Hong Kong. Jean is supposedly in Shanghai to appear in a theatrical production entitled Saturday Fiction.
Meet Capitaine Victor Coste: an intelligent, inquisitive detective in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the godforsaken départements that lie beyond the périphérique (ringroad) that encircles central Paris. However, he knows nothing about cars and is hopeless with street names. "Bobigny, Chemin-Vert, meant nothing to him. But there was no way he could forget the case of a kid found crushed under a fridge thrown from the twenty-fourth floor of one of the tower blocks onto a police patrol. " Olivier Norek, Coste's creator, was one of the writers of the popular TV crime drama Spiral and you can tell. The Lost and the Damned hits the ground running and never lets up. The capitaine's sensational first case has shades of zombie-ism, spontaneous combustion and vampirism, a tall story
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But there are rumours of other motives for her return, such as rekindling a romance with the play's director (Mark Chao), working with her adoptive father, or freeing her ex-husband. Jean can trust no one: her room at the Cathay Hotel is bugged, and people who claim to be friends, colleagues, and admirers approach her with secret agendas. Written by Ma Yingli, who also penned Lou's TIFF '06 selection Summer Palace, Saturday Fiction sweeps us up in its intricate plot, fascinating period detail, and simmering romance. Zeng Jian's beguiling black-and-white camerawork floats across rooms and through corridors as though pursuing its characters with the hope of catching some accidental revelation. The attack on Pearl Harbor looming, we watch Saturday Fiction with the knowledge that everything is on the cusp of change, yet, through Lou's captivating, suspenseful storytelling, each moment seems pierced with possibility. GIOVANNA FULVI
But then to take that point to heart, one has to care about her character, her story and her paltry justification for her final, flummoxing act of double-cross ("I did what I thought I should do") and the motivationally murky, psychologically jerky "Saturday Fiction" makes that frustratingly hard to do.
As though to compensate for having far too many characters, Ma Yingi's script skimps on characterization — no one here has any defining personality trait except untrustworthiness. Mild relief will come to those hardy viewers who make it past the halfway mark, however, as around then, everybody suddenly acquires a gun and it's a mite easier to work out who is in opposition to whom by where they're pointing the shooty end. Still, for such a bullet-riddled, betrayal-addled spy thriller, "Saturday Fiction" is a slog, and not even one rescued by Li's star power or the potential handsomeness of 1941 Shanghai shot in black and white. Instead, DP Zeng Jian's anachronistically modern, low-contrast handheld camerawork keeps us so close to the characters that we seldom get a sense of place, while staying in such perpetual motion that we also seldom get a moment to to watch these actors actually act, to contemplate their faces. This is something of a crime when one of the faces is Gong Li's. It signals a grand missed opportunity for what ought to be a compelling, classy spy caper when even the final big "twist" feels curiously weightless, despite essentially turning the mysterious, tragic Jean into one of history's great monsters.
Directed by Starring Cover art, photos and screenshots Yu Jin is working undercover gathering intelligence for the Allies. Release date: 4 September 2019 My tags: Add tags Update feed mirinbuddy added this to wanted list 2 months, 2 weeks ago DioN rated this 7/10 2 months, 4 weeks ago DioN posted a image 2 months, 4 weeks ago People who liked this also liked Rating: 7. 1 Rating: 7. 2 Rating: 7. 3 Rating: 7. 6 Rating: 6 Rating: 7. 7 Rating: 7. 8 Rating: 7. 9 Rating: 8 Rating: 8. 1 Rating: 8. 2 Rating: 6. 6 Rating: 8. 3 Rating: 6. 9
This is a problem and a huge red herring because the theater piece "Saturday Fiction" (which appears to be something about striking factory workers) has no resonance with the film "Saturday Fiction" and the transitions between the two keep tripping the narrative up, like the play is a badly placed coffee table. Here, the play is very much not the thing. This is instead the story of Jean Yu (Gong Li), a famous actress who returns to Shanghai in December 1941, ostensibly to appear in a theatrical production directed by and co-starring her old flame Tan Na (Mark Chao). Jean's real reasons for returning are obscure and Hydra-headed: as soon as one is revealed three more pop up.
© Wild Bunch Strand Releasing has scooped all North American rights to Lou Ye 's Second World War-set spy thriller "Saturday Fiction" from Wild Bunch. The film world premiered in competition at Venice last year and played at the New York Film Festival. "Saturday Fiction" stars Gong Li as a famous actress who has returned to Japanese-occupied Shanghai to act in a play directed by and co-starring her old flame. But it turns out she has ulterior motives, functioning as a double agent gathering intelligence for the Allies leading up to Japan's upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor. Written by Ma Yingli ("Summer Palace"), the lavishly shot black-and-white movie also stars Mark Chao, Pascal Greggory and Tom Wlaschiha. Strand Releasing, one of the key purveyors of upscale foreign-language cinema in the U. S., previously distributed Ye's critically-acclaimed 2000 drama "Suzhou River, " as well as "Spring Fever, " which had won the screenplay award at Cannes in 2009. "We're excited to be handling another one of (Lou) Ye's films, and this one is as visually stunning and distinctive as all of his work.