Gong gives it her best shot, but there’s only so much she can do.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 27, 2022

Saturday Fiction proves, as if proof were needed, that even the most radiant movie star can be sandbagged by indifferent or clumsy story construction and awkward direction.

| Apr 27, 2022

A lackluster, convoluted and underwhelming crime thriller low on palpable thrills and suspense.

| Apr 22, 2022

A spotty fusion of spy-story contrivances and diffuse themes of truth and artifice...

| Apr 21, 2022

[Gong] conveys depths of pain and longing even when the script offers none, seducing us as effortlessly as Jean seduces her enemies.

| Apr 21, 2022

Filmed with stifling hand-held photography, many scenes plod along in real time without a momentous or compelling pace. The sound designs focus on background noises, instead of a musical score, also soon becomes more irritating than intriguing.

| Apr 20, 2022

This is a welcome return for Gong Li as an actress and another reminder that Lou continues to be one of Chinas most talented filmmakers.

| Feb 13, 2022

If one can get over Lou's art school fascination with the look of that era, there is a workable, if credulity-stretching, story that comments on the parallels between show business and the art of spying.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2021

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

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 4, 2019

With bitter irony seething in his blend of kinetic camerawork and silky black-and-white tones, Lou borrows the form of historical drama to expose the corruption and the terror of a modern surveillance state.

| Sep 30, 2019

Saturday Fiction could have worked as a straightforward but layered espionage story in the same vein as Bridge of Spies. Instead, the filmmakers tried to be clever, and as a result, they lost the plot - literally.

| Sep 28, 2019

For [director] Lou Ye, ambiguity is much more attractive than any closed, conclusive answer. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 23, 2019

Spy thrillers are one genre where it's very easy to have too much of a good thing. They're powered by secrets and twists, but Saturday Fiction is burdened with too much of the former at the start, and too much of the latter by the end.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 10, 2019

A film as frustrating as putting a broken mirror back together. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Sep 10, 2019

Ma Yingi's screenplay describes a plot drawn in smoke with editors Lou Ye and Feng Shan Yu-Lin keeping everything moving at a fair clip and piling deception and character on character, betrayal on betrayal.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 9, 2019

The film might ultimately be just a bit too conventional in conception and approach, but a vibrant, bittersweet ride it certainly is.

| Sep 5, 2019

As elusive and unsatisfying for us as it is for its various characters.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 5, 2019

Saturday Fiction ties itself in knots, but there's something splendid about its mystery. It will keep you watching, guessing and surprised, until the final, violent reel unfolds.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 5, 2019

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

| Sep 4, 2019

Theatre and reality merge to elegant but confused effect in Saturday Fiction...

| Sep 4, 2019