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T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2019 | 11THE ART OF FILMMAKING
Lou Ye, the Chinese director, has had his
share of run-ins with his country’s film
censors over his successful and es-
teemed career.
There was the two-year ban on mak-
ing films after showing “Suzhou River”
at the International Film Festival Rot-
terdam, the five-year ban after making
“Summer Palace” and, most recently, a
protracted approval process for “The
Shadow Play,” which was shown in Feb-
ruary at the Berlin Film Festival. It is al-
most news when Mr. Lou does not re-
ceive increased official attention.
An exception to this track record is
“Saturday Fiction,” Mr. Lou’s new film
set in wartime Shanghai in December
1941 and centered on a Shanghai actress
embroiled in intrigue. Next week, it will
have its world premiere at the Venice In-
ternational Film Festival.
“I’ve been through the censorship
process many times, and as a filmmaker
it’s never entirely clear to me why cen-
sors react the way they do. I don’t quite
know,” Mr. Lou said in a phone interview
from China.
“Saturday Fiction” is one of 66 new
features in the Official Selection for the
Venice festival’s 76th edition, which
runs from Wednesday to Sept. 7. Mr.
Lou’s movie will screen alongside works
by Hirokazu Kore-eda (“The Truth,” the
festival’s opening-night selection), Oliv-
ier Assayas (“Wasp Network”), James
Gray (“Ad Astra”), Noah Baumbach
(“Marriage Story”), Roman Polanski
(“J’Accuse”), Roy Andersson (“About
Endlessness”), Pablo Larrain (“Ema”)
and Steven Soderbergh (“The Laundro-
mat”).
The festival is widely regarded as a
prestige showcase that raises the cur-
tain on the fall season and the vying for
ink and little gold men. The lineup this
year includes the hotly anticipated
“Joker” from Todd Phillips, the election
drama “The Perfect Candidate” from
the Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa al-
Mansour and the Imelda Marcos docu-
mentary “The Kingmaker” from Lauren
Greenfield.
“Saturday Fiction” is not a fall re-
lease, but it features Gong Li as a fa-
mous actress involved in a theatrical
production and espionage. Mr. Lou has
been called “contemporary Chinese cin-
ema’s greatest director of actors” by the
critic Shelley Kraicer, and the new film’s
setting on the eve of Pearl Harbor prom-
ises to match the high drama of Mr.
Lou’s other historical films.
“Summer Palace” was set in Tianan-
men Square in 1989, and “Purple Butter-
fly” in Manchuria and Shanghai during
the Japanese occupation.
Global events aside, Mr. Lou found a
special appeal in the new film’s familiar
theatrical milieu. His parents worked
backstage in theater, and he fondly re-members the Lyceum Theater in Shang-
hai that features in the film.
“I am a product of the theatrical
world,” he said. “So it was a very special
experience being able to go back to
Shanghai” — from Beijing, where he
lives — “after a long time and shoot this
movie in that neighborhood.” (The film’s
title in China is “Lyceum Theater.”)
The complex plot takes place over six
intense days and is a mix of period
drama, romantic melodrama and spy
story. Like Mr. Lou’s previous work, the
film follows the passions of its charac-
ters. The story was adapted from the
novel “Death in Shanghai” by Hong
Ying into a screenplay by Mr. Lou’s col-
laborator Ma Yingli, who is also a
producer and director of documenta-
ries, including a behind-the-scenes look
at “The Shadow Play.”
Ms. Ma, who studied filmmaking in
Berlin before the wall fell, saw wartime
Shanghai as a prime space to explore
storytelling and structure. She said she
believed the depiction of double lives
like that of the lead character could res-
onate for many viewers.
“I want to tell a story about how little
things can really affect history in gen-
eral and how we all have a role in life toplay when it comes to things around us,”
Ms. Ma said in a phone interview. “It is a
good analogy for people who have lives
on and offstage, with different identities
and choices.”
In treacherous plot, Gong Li’s charac-
ter juggles an ex-husband, an adoptive
father and the temptation of escaping
the war with her lover. (The interna-
tional cast includes Pascal Greggory,
Joe Odagiri and Mark Chao.) For Mr.
Ma, the fraught moment in history un-expectedly recalled her time as a stu-
dent in Germany, though the connection
did not come to mind while writing.
“When I was in East Berlin during the
1980s, the wall was still there,” she said.
“I was surrounded. There wasn’t any
freedom around me.”
Despite the story’s setting, the movie
had a smooth process of approval by the
Chinese censors. Mr. Lou and Ms. Ma at-
tributed this to the historical nature of
the film, which was shot in black and
white.
“In terms of the subject matter, the
themes and the ideas I’m trying to deal
with in this new film, I feel there are sim-
ilarities with ‘The Shadow Play ’” M r.
Lou said. “They’re both movies that deal
with reality versus illusion, what’s real
versus what’s fake. Perhaps the dis-
tance in terms of time and space makes
this movie more palatable.”
The approval process for Chinese re-
leases can be unpredictable. The time
frame can vary, Ms. Ma said. It begins
with a screenplay review, which typical-
ly takes 20 days or less. But once the film
is shot and a final cut is ready to present,
it might take significantly more time.
For “Saturday Fiction,” approval did not
take long, to Mr. Lou’s pleasant surprise.But the possibility of unforeseen de-
lays or cancellation can make a festival
programmer a little nervous. That is an
understandable concern after the high-
profile withdrawal of Zhang Yimou’s lat-
est film “One Second” at the same Berlin
festival where Mr. Lou’s “The Shadow
Play” appeared.
“Knowing that the situation in China
is so complicated, we were a little bit
worried,” Alberto Barbera, director of
the Venice festival, said by phone. Mr.
Barbera had seen the film in an early
form in April, and by June was assured
that it would be free to screen abroad.
The approval means that the drama of
“Saturday Fiction” should be limited to
what is on the screen. But if Mr. Lou’s
previous experiences with the approval
process have affected his filmmaking,
he is not showing it.
“When I am in the creative process,
when I am focusing on creating the film,
I am only focusing on that, I don’t think
about the censors at all,” he said.
With two films in the spotlight in one
year, Mr. Lou and Ms. Ma appear to have
found a way to continue working at a
high level. The proof lies in the premiere
of “Saturday Fiction,” next week on the
Lido.Making a movie, surviving the censors
With ‘Saturday Fiction,’
China’s process was easier
for the director Lou Ye
BY NICOLAS RAPOLDComplexity
In “Saturday Fic-
tion” by Lou Ye, left,
Gong Li, above in
sunglasses, plays
an actress involved
in espionage. The
film is set in
wartime Shanghai.YING FILMSADAM BERRY/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCKVenice and Deauville Film Festivals
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