Synopsis
Iconic actress Jean Yu returns to Japanese-occupied China to star in a play directed by her former lover. However, her undercover work for the Allies soon places her life in grave danger.
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Cast
- Gong LiYu Jin
- Mark ChaoTan Na
- Joe OdagiriFuruya Saburo
- Pascal GreggoryFrederic Hubert
- Tom WlaschihaSaul Speyer
- Huang XiangliBai Yunshang
- Ayumu NakajimaKajiwara
- Eric WangMo Zhiyin
- Zhang SongwenNi Zeren
- Shibuya TenmaLieutenant Hosoda
Recommendations
- 88
Slant Magazine
The hegemony of history is rigid, but Lou Ye is still able to disrupt it in the form of its representation. - 80
CineVue
Saturday Fiction certainly demands patience, shrouded at first in a smog of exposition. - 75
The Film Stage
A movie stuffed to bursting with sumptuous movie-movie atmosphere, the swoony charge of ideas about art, love, and espionage, and good-enough storytelling solutions. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
This moody, black-and-white period piece always intrigues, even if it only intermittently catches fire. - 60
The New York Times
Star power is a logic unto itself, and Lou has ensured a limitless supply by casting Gong as an actress-spy. She conveys depths of pain and longing even when the script offers none, seducing us as effortlessly as Jean seduces her enemies. - 58
IndieWire
Mesmeric but frustrating ... An explosive third act shootout may be the most remarkable sequence that Lou has ever shot, but all of the hard-boiled fireworks in the world can’t diminish the feeling that he can’t identify his muse on a canvas this big. - 50
Los Angeles Times
As convolutedly scripted by Ma Yingli, and pushed around by the restless camerawork, it’s primarily a spotty fusion of spy-story contrivances and diffuse themes of truth and artifice, although the playground is plenty evocative. - 40
Screen Daily
The narrative would be sufficiently daunting to follow if the film didn’t make such heavy play on the thin line between fiction and reality; the frequent blurring between the two Saturday Fictions – Lou Ye’s and Tan Na’s – is muddily executed to begin with, without the play being so unconvincing as a piece of stage drama.
