Saturday Fiction
2h 8m
Directed by Lou Ye • 2019 • China
Starring Gong Li, Mark Chao, Joe Odagiri
The latest from acclaimed director Lou Ye—one of contemporary Chinese cinema’s boldest auteurs—is a stylish, spellbinding thriller built around a tour-de-force performance from the great Gong Li. It’s 1941, and China has become a wartime intelligence battlefield. Actor Jean Yu (Gong) 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, Jean Yu starts to question whether to reveal what she has learned about the imminent Pearl Harbor attack.