Saturday Fiction(兰心大剧院)

The Film Stage by

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.

The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij

This moody, black-and-white period piece always intrigues, even if it only intermittently catches fire.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

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.

Variety by Jessica Kiang

[A] grandiloquently incoherent misfire

CineVue by John Bleasdale

Saturday Fiction certainly demands patience, shrouded at first in a smog of exposition.

Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney

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.

Slant Magazine by Sam C. Mac

The hegemony of history is rigid, but Lou Ye is still able to disrupt it in the form of its representation.