Poster of "Lyceum Theatre".
On the ticket stub of the premiere of "Lyceum Theatre", actor Gong Li wrote such a sentence: Making the film the ultimate and pure is the responsibility and dream of our filmmakers, if you like movies, you will love "Lyceum Theatre". Gong Li told the Beijing News reporter, Gong Li told the Beijing News reporter that she believes that "Lyceum Theatre" is director Lou Ye's biggest pattern so far, but also the best film, full of the "purity" that is now becoming more and more scarce in the film market.
Ticket stubs for the premiere of Lyceum Theatre.
Directed by Lou Ye, starring Gong Li and Zhao Youting, and co-starring Oda Chejang and Pascal Gregory, the film "Lyceum Grand Theatre" was released nationwide on October 15, which is adapted from the novel "Death of Shanghai" by female writer Hongying, based on the novel "Shanghai" by Japanese writer Toshiichi Yokomitsu, telling the story of a spy war that took place within a week before Pearl Harbor. Under the lens of Lou Ye, the sixth-generation director with a strong author's style, "Lyceum Theatre" presents a unique open-ended performance temperament: how Gong Li of the acting school interprets the secret and complex spy, how Zhao Youting "lives in the moment" under the open lens, how the drama of the spy era on the beach is full of personal passions and desires, and how the play-in-the-play in the film creates a psychedelic illusion between reality and drama... The Beijing News reporter exclusively interviewed the lead actors Gong Li and Zhao Youting to listen to them talk about how they understood the "freestyle performance" requested by the director during the filming of "Lyceum Theatre".
Gong Li plays a very complicated role, and she can shoot but always shed tears
This is Gong Li's first cooperation with Lou Ye, she said that acting in Yu Yan does not need to be "persuaded" or "invited" at all, and at the moment she first saw the script, she was deeply attracted by this woman who carries a love-hate relationship: "She is a very impressive woman, maybe this is more like a women's movie, which can show a very strong female power." 」 I like this role very much, in a more impetuous environment, Lou Ye can make such a movie, I am very fortunate to be able to participate, this character is very three-dimensional and rich, the temperament of the movie is definitely not a hip-hop entertainment film, there will be entertainment, but more is the sense of art. "The identity of Yu Yan in the movie is complicated, she is a big star on the Shanghai theater stage during the War of Resistance Against Japan, an orphan girl who was trained by her adoptive father to shoulder secrets after she grew up, a woman who hides secrets but cannot easily move her feelings, but she tosses and turns between her ex-husband and her lover, and has experienced the test of life and death. Gong Li said that Yu Wei is like a complex and secret synthesis of identities, her triple identity (spy, actor, woman) uses and contains each other, and she has a deep chemical reaction with everyone, layer by layer like a Russian matryoshka doll.
Gong Li has a lot of gunfight scenes in "Lyceum Theatre".
In Gong Li's eyes, Yu Yan is a calm and strong on the outside, but very soft on the inside, even if she does such work as a spy, but the appearance and inner emotions are somewhat distorted, she has a sense of mission for the profession, but the heart also yearns for the emotions that women want: "She will not let people see a large amount of joy and sorrow, this is lou Ye's strength in shaping the character, such as Yu Yan's gun battle is very powerful, but even if she kills this person, she will not go up to make up a shot. You can observe that almost everyone in the film will make up a shot after shooting and put people to death, but Yu Yan never. She will even be touched by the enemy's nostalgia for her ex-wife, and she is very different in her heart, so that the complexity of the character is constructed. In some details, you can see that Yu Yan's face always carries tears. Acting, Gong Li became her, in the process she did not seem to realize that she was crying, the expression was natural but emotionally rich, can impress the audience with tears, Gong Li attributed this performance to "really enter the role": "For example, the scene where I had dinner with director Tan Na (Zhao Youting), the Japanese saw Yu Yan forcibly asking to take a photo with her, the attitude was very contemptuous, and he said insulting words. In the process, Tan Na has been blocking Yu Yan and protecting her, in fact, Yu Yan is carrying a gun, these people are not her opponents, she can completely shoot, but she knows that she can't do it. After the Japanese left, she faced Tan Na's protection, and said lightly, 'Nothing to get used to', which made her feel insulted by the invaders, as a Chinese of grievances, it would make her have a particularly sad, angry but difficult to release expression, she was also touched by Tan Na's maintenance of her, but she had no expression at that moment, even if the tears were on her face, it was difficult to completely release the surging emotions in her heart. ”
Director Lou Ye let the actors "let it go", and Zhao Youting didn't know what to do
Zhao Youting, who plays the drama director Tan Na in the film, told the Beijing News reporter that participating in the "Lyceum Theatre" is like having a dream with everyone, this is the most magical crew, this freedom gives the actors an unprecedented degree of freedom, Director Lou Ye is almost completely "laissez-faire": "On the set, he almost never overturned your performance, did not say 'I think you said this line badly, I think you should act or something', he is very loving, very respectful, very concerned about the actor, But he is very demanding of the staff on the spot, and he also tries to clear the scene to provide the actors with a full sense of security, and he will not do anything to interfere with the actors' performances. Zhao Youting remembers that when he first entered the group, he was still a little confused, it was precisely because he had one hundred percent of the expression space, but he did not know what to do, but later he gradually understood the director's intentions, but also benefited from the extremely good professional actors next to him to give him some inspiration and reaction, "Lou Ye wants to be a particularly real thing, does not need to go through any design, does not need to have performance traces, I hope that you are a living person in the play, living in the moment, doing what you should do." ”
Zhao Youting played the drama director Tan Na in "Lyceum Theatre".
In terms of performance freedom, Gong Li also feels the same way, she said that everyone has abandoned the more systematic or rigid performance modes in the past, and just performed freely and freely: "We will have a script outline, and if we shoot every day, we will shoot a good scene." This scene does not have any split-shot script, no excessive line design, just like a stage play, one scene at a time, all the pictures are directly presented in the director's mind, and the chemical reaction produced by the actors is also subtle and powerful. Lou Ye and I don't talk much at the scene, he doesn't want to disturb my mood in Yu Yan, but when shooting, he has been observing you, sometimes at most he will say some fine-tuning of the expression, maybe the look in the eyes when a scene turns back is too strong, he will say 'a little less, take a little'. This time, we have been preparing for a long time in the early stage, almost two months, we have been talking about the script, talking about the role, anyway, we slowly shoot, not as soon as we come up to shoot heavy scenes, but follow the plot slowly let you remember, slowly let you enter, such as the beginning of the movie drama rehearsal, everyone will dance, walk around, very relaxed, but also can find the right feeling. ”
The play within the play has stamina, "Is it acting now, or is it reality?" ”
Lou Ye's open-plan shooting and Gong Li's mature performance were fitted in the filming of "Lyceum Grand Theatre" and sparked. In the film, Yu Yan and every character have a relationship, and in every opponent scene in the film, there is a strong chemical reaction, and even praised by film critics as "it is time to push the heroine in the film circle". Gong Li said that thanks to the superb acting skills of these actors, the whole performance was extremely smooth and in-depth: "Some people in the film know what I do, some people don't know what I do, but everyone has a tacit understanding, just like Sol (Tom Rasziha), he also doesn't know what mission I perform, he has been protecting me, and finally he is going to send information, my feeling at that time is that he is likely to be sacrificed, I know he can't run out, so I said 'Take' to him." Care', when the tears flowed down unconsciously, her mood was very sad. The shots of wandering between the rehearsal stage and the backstage, the emotions outside the play between Yu Yan and Tan Na, often confuse the audience, "Is it acting now, or is it reality?" Asked if he liked Lou Ye's "play within a play" shooting concept, Gong Li said that the play was particularly agile in walking on and off the stage outside the play, and it was also easy to show it: "The film combines reality and drama, and when the stage drama is staged, historical events also follow the storm, and the last scene, everyone does not know whether it is a play or a real, after filming, acting, and watching, I know that the film's staying power is really big." ”
Gong Li played a big star on the Shanghai theater stage during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in "Lyceum Grand Theatre".
"I think it's a great work, it's a tribute to Chinese women, to Chinese cinema, with a commercial element and a special way of telling stories." Chinese actors and foreign actors all show the time very harmoniously in the whirlpool of the times. If you look at the history of cinema, some films that tell Chinese stories have imposed foreigners into it; there are also cases where we Chinese actors have not been able to participate in foreign creations, but in this movie, I think it is the best and most appropriate one to integrate Chinese and foreign actors, and you can think back to which film has done this, almost nothing. Gong Li further explained the greatness of "Lyceum Theatre": "There is a very strong presentation effect in the movie, and during the viewing process, you will find that the lines are almost uniform, although the actors in the film speak Chinese, japanese, and French, but the lines in the final film almost constitute a unified film language, you are like watching a Chinese movie, that's all." We made this work in the hope that those audiences who love movies can seriously and purely watch a movie, not just go to the cinema for entertainment when visiting the mall, and find "the way the movie is".
Beijing News reporter Zhou Huixiaowan
Edited by Huang Jialing Proofreader Li Lijun