In Shakespeare's "Everybody Rejoices", Jacques has an unforgettable sentence: "The whole world is a stage." "Lou Ye's "Lyceum Theatre" depicts Shanghai in 1941, telling the story of the famous actress Yu Yan who returned to Shanghai during the isolated island period and starred in the drama "Saturday Novel" directed by her old love, but did she really only perform on stage?
Lyceum Theatre
Her ex-husband was imprisoned by the Japanese, and rumor has it that she was actually trying to rescue him, while Yu's French adoptive father had always wanted her to be a spy. In a city where everyone hides secrets and no one can trust them, people still only care about the upcoming drama, and there is a strange peace in the surge.
The story is set in December 1941, when actor Yu Wei (Gong Li) travels from Hong Kong to the French Concession in Shanghai and lives in a hotel run by Shapil (Tom Rasziha). She came here to rehearse a play directed by Old Love (Zhang Songwen). In the play, she disguises herself as another person and dresses up like Marlene Dietrich, inspired by Japanese novelist Toshiichi Yokomitsu's Shanghai.
In the first half of the film, not everything is as it seems, and this view is strongly implied. Each person has more than one identity to play, creating a sense of identity that coexists simultaneously, layered, and sometimes falsely. For example, in Yu Yan's eyes, Bai Yunsheng (Huang Xiangli) is a naïve, although a bit of a fan of the limelight, but also a writer with a wide network. Some viewers quickly recognize her as basically Eve, a lady with a black bob head, especially when she starts rehearsing and quickly memorizes her lines.
But isn't that the end of her identity, is she really just an actress posing as a fan, or is she working for some national institution? When she talks to producer Mo Zhiyin (Wang Chuanjun) in his car, things don't seem so simple. And mo zhiyin, who wears round glasses, a large leather coat, and a soft tweed hat, looks like he is ready to participate in something.
The film script was also inspired by the female writer Hongying's novel "The Death of Shanghai", written by Ma Yingli, and she also created films such as "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind" and "Tuina". The most interesting thing about Lyceum Theatre is its mirror-like approach to spy movies, where each character may have one or more hidden threads of development, and they all have their own characters to play.
She is not only an actress who plays someone else on stage, but in her own life she is an accomplice to his wife, ex, adopted daughter, agent, and even a spy, precisely because she looks a bit like the late wife of Japanese intelligence official Saburo Furutani (Oda Cejō).
Lou Ye likes all the stylistic elements in the play, such as the continuous rain, the costumes full of the atmosphere of the times and the fierce gun battles. But despite his obsession with superficial things, he paints a rather detached look at the confusing side of the story — trying to figure out who's playing whom. Because everyone is trying to get the job done and live to the end, but some obviously won't. Here, revealing true feelings is dangerous and everyone tries to avoid it, which also means that although the story is fascinating because of its twists and turns and constant revelations, the emotional pulse of the film is quite hidden.
This is not a spy romance like Ang Lee's Color Ring. The director also doesn't give the audience a hint of his previously controversial works, such as the pent-up longing in "A Drunken Night in the Spring Breeze" that may explode into indulgent coddling. Lyceum Theater ultimately feels like a rather reserved genre novel. Of course, the scene of indulgence is not always necessary, but in this story where everyone is guarded, some moments of indulgence can give us a glimpse of the most basic needs of the characters, so as to peek into the most basic human nature and enjoy the beating heart of the movie.
Gong Li was in front of Lou Ye's camera, as calm as ever. Lou Ye is a sixth-generation filmmaker in China, and he knows how to fuse Gong Li's star effect with his directing art, just like Guan Jinpeng's collaboration with Maggie Cheung in "Ruan Lingyu". Yu Yan's emotional life will never be completely clear, and Gong Li knows how to inject amazing affection in a small moment. In the hotel lobby, for a moment, Yu Yan just told Shapil to "take care". But Gong Li's gestures, eyes and expressions elevate this parting greeting to a tragic level. She knew what was going to happen next, knew she didn't have time for a long speech, but her words still mattered. Through Gong Li's performance, through pure emotional power, he successfully promoted the role of Yu Yan.
Gong Li as Yu Yan