Saturday Fiction Movie Storyline. 1941, since the Japanese occupation, China has become a wartime intelligence battlefield for the Allies and the Axis Powers. Iconic actress Jean Yu returns to Shanghai, ostensibly to appear in the play Saturday Fiction directed by her former lover. But what is her true aim? To free her ex-husband?
To gather intelligence for the Allied Forces? To work for her adoptive father? Or to escape from war with her lover? As she embarks on her mission, with friends ever more difficult to distinguish from undercover agents, as everything spirals out of control, Jean Yu starts to question whether to reveal what she has learnt about the imminent Pearl Harbor attack.
Saturday Fiction (Chinese: 兰心大剧院) is a 2019 Chinese drama film directed by Lou Ye. Written by Yingli Ma and starring Gong Li, Mark Chaoband Joe Odagiri. The film was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, where it had premiere on 4 September, 2019. It has also been selected as closing film of 11th Beijing International Film Festival to be screened on 29 September 2021. It was released on April 22, 2022 in the United States by Strand Releasing.
Director’s Statement
When I was a kid, I used to follow my parents, who worked in theatre, backstage, at the Lyceum Theatre in Shanghai. I spent a lot of interesting time there. It was also where I rubbed shoulders with actors in costume and watched them playing different roles, their loves and hatreds, and their separations through life or death on stage.
Then I’d see them walking off the stage and chatting in the dressing rooms. And I’d follow them again, leaving the theatre, going back to their dull and ordinary real lives. It was a fantastic experience, shuttling back and forth between stories and reality. Many years later, reading Death of Shanghai by Hong Ying (a novel about Shanghai’s solitary Island period) gave me the same feeling.
The first week of December 1941 changed the history of the world—although the people of that period did not know it. Unaware of the future, they would simply live their lives as usual, following their daily routines and pursuing their goals. During Shanghai’s solitary Island period, in and outside the theatre, on and off- stage, they were slowly approaching that unknown “Saturday” which belongs to their own destinies.
This film is about the destinies of different people during a time of complex world crisis. It is also a dialogue with the Saturday School, an important school in the history of Chinese Contemporary Literature.
Saturday Fiction (2022)
Directed by: Lou Ye
Starring: Gong Li, Mark Chao, Joe Odagiri, Pascal Greggory, Tom Wlaschiha, Huang Xiangli, Wang Chuanjun, Ayumu Nakajima, Zhang Songwen, Songwen Zhang, Tenma Shibuya, Joe Odagiri
Screenplay by: Yingli Ma
Art Direction by: Cheng Zhong
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Strand Releasing
Release Date: September 4, 2021 (Vinece), April 22, 2022 (United States)
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