"Lyceum Theatre" was released in China on October 15, 2021. It is adapted from two novels, one is Hongying's "Death in Shanghai" and the other is "Shanghai" by Toshiichi Yokomitsu.
The director is Lou Ye, who is also one of the producers of the film and participated in the editing. Lou Ye has successively released works in theaters in recent years, including 2018's "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind", 2014's "Tuina", and 2012's "Floating City Mystery". Among them, "Tuina" also won the Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film.
Lou Ye also had some works in the early days that could not be named, just when the "Lyceum Theater" was released, the TV series cooperated by Duan Yihong and Hao Lei was also broadcast, which was a bit of a sense of time and space confusion.
The screenwriter and producer of this film is Ma Yingli, and she and Lou Ye are old partners for many years. "Tuina" and "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind" are both written by her, and "Tuina" also won the Golden Horse Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Ma Yingli is a director, and has dabbled in drama films and documentaries, among which the relatively well-known is "Behind the Dream" directed in 2018, which is a documentary about the production process of "Clouds Made of Rain in the Wind".
Or the familiar recipe, the cinematographer of this film is Zeng Jian, with "Tuina" won the Golden Horse Award for Best Cinematography, to talk about his more popular photography, it should be "A Good Drama" in 2018 with Huang Bo.
Zeng Jian is also engaged in editing work, and once won the Golden Horse Award for Best Editing with "Spring Breeze Drunken Night", which is also a film with Lou Ye.
The cast of this film is quite strong, the core starring is Gong Li, who plays Yu Yan, and other leading actors are Zhao Youting, who plays Tan Na, and Zhang Songwen and Wang Chuanjun, who have gradually become famous in recent years.
Since this film is a World War II theme, Japanese actors have joined. Chief among them is the role of Oda Cejō, a familiar face of Japanese film and Japanese drama, and a cameo role in the recent "Bouquet of Love".
Kajihara, who plays sharpshooter Kajira, is Nakajima, and in the film he also has a head-on gun battle scene with Gong Huang. In Ryusuke Hamaguchi's work "Chance and Imagination", which I shared earlier, the male protagonist of the first part is him.
Playing Hubert, Yu's adoptive father, is the French actor Pascal Gregory, who has been in the film for many years and has a lot of works, often working with famous directors and actors, such as Houmai and Hupel. In addition to "Lyceum Theatre", in 2018 he also participated in another Chinese film" "3 Adventures of Star Creek".
In the film, Shapier, an intelligence worker who works with Yu, is played by Tom Rasziha, and yes, he is Jacquin in "Game of Thrones", a man without a face.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > spoilers ahead</h1>
After the influence of most film and television works, when it comes to old Shanghai, people will always think of qipao, western-style buildings, and slow motion. "Lyceum Theatre" seems to be less "old Shanghai".
The black and white tones are not to show the retro style of Shanghai, and the cheongsam does not appear in a large number of films, and even if it appears on camera, it will not be specially taken care of, just like other costumes, it is just clothes.
Artistic expression comes in many forms, some artists' expressions are harmonious and comfortable, some artists always express uncomfortable things, lou Ye is obviously the latter.
Looking at his unchanged handheld shooting for many years, I don't know how many audiences have been vomited, and "Lyceum Theatre" is also shaking from beginning to end. All along, this shooting method seems to be the timbre of his speech, rather than the content of his speech, so in my personal opinion, it does not feel very advanced, just hearing this tone, I know that he is Lou Ye.
"Lyceum Theatre" did not shoot in the film and television base, but directly filmed in Shanghai, for which it also needed to do a lot of CG work in the later stage, erasing the high-rise buildings in the background of the picture. The rough tones that do not emphasize chiaroscuro, as well as a large number of mid-shot or close-up handheld heels, also make it almost impossible to see the full picture of the building.
Retro nostalgia does not seem to be what Lou Ye wants to pursue in this movie, and the film focuses on the characters, especially the character of Yu Yan. She's like a poster on the wall, and usually we only see the characters, and even if we have a background, we only intercept parts.
Yu Yan's line of sight was only a very narrow range around her, and she did not have the ability to see the whole picture of the world she was in, let alone control her own destiny.
Most people were like this in the war years, so such a story can not only happen in Shanghai, but also in Paris occupied by the German army, and it is not important whether it is a cheongsam and a western-style building.
The film has many distancing effects, allowing the audience to see that the characters are actually acting on the stage, and then deliberately confusing the stage with the real scene, but the audience can basically see the overall situation, only the authorities are fans.
The separation may also be a state of accidental return to God by Yu Yan. Because she has too many identities, she is Hubert's adopted daughter, his intelligence worker, Ni Zeren's ex-wife, and Tan Na's lover.
What is the purpose of her return to Shanghai, others are secretly speculating, these identities have a reason for her to return to Shanghai.
In the end, we saw that every reason seemed to be true, and after returning to Shanghai, she did what these identities would do, deceive intelligence, and save Ni Zeren. After Tan Na learned the truth, he once accused Yu Yan of using himself as a pawn, but in the end, Yu Yan, who was seriously injured, still went to the appointment as scheduled.
These identities, from the perspective of the overall pattern, are naturally the most important to resist Japan. But Yu's choice seems to be, I want it all.
In the film, Hubert treasures an original German version of The Troubles of Young Werther, with Nietzsche's inscription on it. That passage was translated in the Chinese subtitle of this release version as "Expecting love in return is not a demand for love, but a kind of vanity." It has also been suggested that it should be translated as "What people love is not the object of desire, but the desire itself." ”
I have a poor level of foreign language proficiency and cannot talk about the advantages and disadvantages, but in english translated from German, there is the word desire, which contains various meanings such as desire, desire, lust, and carnal desire.
In the film, when Yu Yan finally kills Furutani Saburo with a gun, in the background is a poster of her drama "Saturday Novel", which is the work of her and Tan Na.
In front of you is the enemy, behind you is the lover, to the lover, naturally there is desire, to the enemy, not necessarily there is none.
Yu Yan also has an identity, she looks very much like Furutani Saburo's wife Miyoko, when Furutani Saburo is affected by drugs and is delirious, Yu Yan plays her actor's specialty, playing Miyoko to deceive intelligence, if she wants to enter the play, she naturally has to have desire for Furutani Saburo.
No matter who the object was, she was surrounded by desire all the time, and from the moment she returned to Shanghai, it seemed as if the engine had started, and it burned until she killed Furutani Saburo, and the engine did not go out, so she went to the dock bar to find Tan Na.
This desire-fueled engine will sail until the end of a person's life, and then put back on Nietzsche's inscription, and the desire may have no specific object, but only an instinct to burn itself.
Next up is a very subjective bias, which is about performance. First of all, Zhao Youting's performance, as his character says, is a chess piece, which is held back by Gong Li.
Gong Li's performance is my personal favorite passage is her rivalry with Bai Mei's actor Huang Xiangli. Of course, it's not just because of the "bed scene" that wants to say goodbye. Rather, Gong Li's state in the film is a situation of controlling the overall situation, which is used to be just right in the relationship between Yan and Bai Mei's characters.
In contrast, Gong Li's performance in the first half of the film, my personal feeling seems to be ready to die heroically. This will show that she has firmly chosen the intelligence worker among several identities, and there is less of a sense of ambiguity between several identities.
And this atmosphere of the overall situation has been determined, and the unpredictable state presented by the audio-visual of the film is somewhat in conflict.
In general, "Lyceum Theatre" is still like Lou Ye's past works, focusing on individual fate and paying less attention to ideology.
The difference is that this time there is a gunfight, the camera seems to be shaking quite well, it is a new experience that combines personal style and genre elements.
As for Emperor Gong's change of brother, he didn't feel new, we all grew up watching Qin Hao, who was drunk in the spring wind.