[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: No real feeling to 'Saturday Fiction'
Gong Li stars in Saturday Fiction, directed by Lou Ye.
Lou Ye's new spy drama Saturday Fiction started off promising, literally tossing the viewer right into the spin cycle. Actress Jean Yu (Gong Li) is returning to Shanghai to appear in a stage play after a successful stint in the Hong Kong movie business, and heads off to meet her director, co-star and former lover Tan Na (Mark Chao). They meet at a dance hall, and they engage in a brief conversation about a factory strike. Suddenly, the music stops, and the camera follows Jean and Tan Na off-stage as their conversation dissolves into argument in one camera motion, intending to blur fact and fiction. It's an effective technique, but Saturday Fiction – also the name of Tan Na's play -- never bothers to fully explain itself.
If it’s meant to convey confusion, then perhaps it did the job too well. Set in December of 1941 during the Second World War, the film takes place over a period of a week. It’s a story about two lovers, one of whom is a spy, who uses “Saturday Fiction” as an Argo-type ruse for a code-breaking operation, and also features a hotel manager (also a spy), armed Japanese forces (which includes some spies), a budding new actress obsessed with Jean (possibly a spy), and Jean's spymaster (definitely a spy). There are so many layers it betrays writer Ma Yingli's intention to keep the film contained even though most of the film takes place in just two locations. It sprawls in all sorts of directions, but each road seems like a dead end.
Exposition is generally frowned upon, but in a film featuring double agents, double crosses and a multitude of characters and languages, it lacks a scene that explains everything to the viewer. Perhaps we've been dumbed down by clear struggles between good vs. bad in the superhero genre, but Lou Ye's black-and-white film noir fails to really tie a neat ribbon around its convoluted plot and too-mysterious femme fatale. History buffs will recognize immediately that the film takes place just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but that connection isn't drawn until the final moments of the film. Revealing the potential implications of Saturday Fiction would’ve been a nice table setter.
Gong Li is an accomplished actress worthy of praise, but even her signature subdued emotions can't give this film enough depth. Visually, with its heavy rain and heavy cigarette smoke, it also fails to capture any depth, and despite its somewhat strict adherence to historical authenticity there are no shots that provide a sense of location or scale. Often in film noir the setting is also a character, but Shanghai is not even Shanghai; it is simply a city with wide streets and a fancy French hotel. Allow me to nitpick, but it's also odd that no character speaks Shanghainese, a language that only began to wane after WWII and what would've been a distinct characteristic of the city. Gong Li’s Chinese sounds Beijing, and Chao's Chinese is tinged with his Taiwanese roots.
Saturday Fiction could've been so much more with less, and its lack of focus makes the film as feel as empty as the fictional film itself.
Saturday Fiction gets two and a half stars out of four.
