WITH the world premiere of his “Saturday Fiction” on Wednesday, Chinese director Lou Ye brought to the Lido, Venice event an intense story of courage, love and war.

Running in the main selection of the festival — and starring renowned Chinese actress Gong Li — the movie is set in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation in 1941.

It tells of Jean Yu (Gong), an iconic actress returning to Shanghai officially to take part in the play “Saturday Fiction.”

Yet, her true role almost immediately appears more significant than that, as the film reveals Yu’s wide net of various relations in the city, a dark Shanghai that, in the so-called “Isolation Island period,” has become a battlefield for opposing intelligence forces.

Is she truly there for theater, or does she have a more dangerous mission in mind? Is she colluding with spies?

What does her former husband — in jail for collaborating with the Japanese — have to do with all this? Is his liberation one of the protagonist’s goals?

Much of this remains untold as Jean Yu seems to enter and exit different lives one day after another.

As the story unfolds, the answers are gradually revealed through the actions of the various characters — shot in masterful black-and-white cinematography — and in the specific historical background characterized by the imminence of the Japanese attack to Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) that would unleash World War II in the Asia-Pacific.

The screenplay by Ma Yingli is inspired by the novels “Death of Shanghai” by Chinese writer Hong Ying and “Shanghai” by Yokomitsu Riichi.

Another strong feature of the movie is its strong theatrical print — the film’s Chinese title is indeed “Lyceum Theater,” which was where the director actually spent time as a child and where his parents worked.

“I spent a lot of interesting times there,” Lou said in the presentation. “It was where I rubbed shoulders with actors in costume and watched them play different roles, their loves and hatreds, and their separations through life or death on stage. Then I’d see them walking off-stage... leaving the theater, going back to their dull and ordinary real lives.”

“It was a fantastic experience, shuttling back and forth between stories and reality. Many years later, reading ‘Death of Shanghai’ by Hong Ying gave me the same feeling,” he explained.

History and drama permeate the whole movie, with Gong playing a woman that proves strong, skilled in the most difficult tasks, courageous, and yet filled with love.

“Since the screenplay review phase, I have found this character extremely challenging,” Gong said at the film’s press conference.

“Lou Ye and I spent about one week exploring the character’s inner world, and Lou helped me understand her kind of complexity.”

“That is because she is a very professional woman... but her inner world is also full of kindness. In the last scenes, for example, she reveals her ability as a killer, but she would not kill a harmless person or an enemy that is already harmless,” the actress explained.

This is the fourth time Gong is at the Venice Film Festival, where she was awarded the Coppa Volpi prize for best actress in 1992 in Golden Lion-winning “The Story of Qiu Ju” by acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

Along with Gong, the movie’s main cast includes Mark Chao, Joe Odagiri, Pascal Greggory, Tom Wlaschiha, Huang Xiangli, Ayumu Nakajima, Wang Chuanjun, and Zhang Songwen.

“Saturday Fiction” is competing for the Golden Lion along with 20 other films at the 76th Venice Film Festival running at the Lido sandbar in Venice until Sept. 7.

It is to be released in China on Dec. 7, 2019, according to producers.

(Xinhua)