MCLC: Lou Ye's Mystery

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Lou Ye's Mystery
***********************************************************

Source: The Guardian (11/20/12):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/nov/20/ye-mystery-fucheng-mishi-review

Mystery (Fucheng mishi) - review
Lou Ye's first release in his homeland for a decade is a beautiful and
violent film echoing some of contemporary China's problems
By Brice Pedroletti

The launch party for the first film by Lou Ye to be screened in China for
10 years was held in Yugong Yishan, a trendy music venue in central
Beijing, once the headquarters of a Chinese warlord. Lou Ye, dressed in
black from top to toe, mingled with the crowd of journalists and friends,
while on stage, the group Zhao Ze played one of the film's theme tunes.

Mystery (Fucheng mishi) was presented at the Cannes Film Festival last May
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/18/mystery-review> and released
in China last month. It is a story of a love triangle that turns to
tragedy against the smoggy backdrop of Wuhan, taken from a woman's
real-life account about her unfaithful husband that caused a stir in China
in 2009. This is Lou Ye's seventh film but only the second (with Purple
Butterfly in 2003) to have been released in his own country. It nearly
failed to make it this time, when a last-minute battle with the censors
led to three seconds and 23 frames being darkened and Lou Ye removing his
name from the credits. The censors didn't come out all that well either,
since Lou Ye decided to go public and post all his exchanges with them
live on Weibo 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/jul/15/weibo-twitter-china>,
 China's Twitter, which brought him widespread public support.

The return of the enfant terrible of Chinese cinema was bound to cause a
stir. He had been banned from making films in his own country for five
years after presenting Summer Palace at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival
without authorisation. That was not the case with Mystery, however. When
it was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes it had received
the seal of approval from the State Administration of Radio, Film &
Television (SARFT). Lou Ye had even joked that the film had all the
necessary authorisations to leave China "unless there's been a last minute
hitch". He never thought for a minute there would be.

The script and the Cannes version of Mystery had been passed after intense
negotiations with the supervisory bodies. According to Nai An, who
produces most of Lou Ye's films, "We had to do a lot of explaining and
communicating. This time we were prepared, since we knew they would be
very cautious with this film."

Mystery is beautiful and violent, both in the emotions it deals with and
the scenes that display them. It echoes some of contemporary China's own
problems, such as corruption, money, ambiguity and morality. And yet as
the French co-producer Kristina Larsen of Les Films du Lendemain put it,
you could almost think you were dealing with some bobos from
Massachusetts. She explained that since there are no film-rating
categories in China, Lou Ye had made the necessary concessions for the
domestic version, such as adding a text at the end explaining that the two
protagonists involved in the crime were later arrested by the police. That
was left out at Cannes.

On 8 September, just before the press conference, Lou Ye was informed by
the Beijing Municipal Film Bureau that his film "could not be a
co-production" and that two scenes (one displaying sexual violence and the
other murder) had to be cut. "It was an order that was quite inconsistent
with earlier decisions. Since no discussion was possible, Lou Ye decided
to go public," explained Nai An. Lou Ye posted about 20 of these exchanges
with the censor on Weibo the form of messages and scans of documents. "I
accept that I'm a film director working in an era of censorship. I just
want dialogue, not confrontation," he wrote on 15 September.

The press picked up on it
<http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/18/entertainment/la-et-mn-china-film-
controversy-20121019> and intellectuals and other filmmakers applauded.
The conflict was with the Beijing Municipal Film Bureau the administrative
office that dealt with his film. The SARFT, which in principle has
authority over the municipal body, pressed for conciliation. Since it was
impossible to cut scenes once the sound mixing was finished, several
seconds were simply darkened.

Now the Chinese and French co-producers have been informed that the
co-production, agreed to in principle, has been cancelled. That will
impact the subsidies the film obtained from the Centre National du Cinéma
et de l'Image Animée (CNC) as a French co-production. The Franco-Chinese
film production procedures signed in 2010 are extremely complex. The China
Film Co-Production Corporation, the official body authorised to deal with
these matters, did emit a favourable opinion on Mystery, but according to
an internal source, failed to obtain the final authorisation from the
SARFT. It has not yet officially informed the CNC.

"Going back on their word just weeks before the film was due to come out,
will threaten the entire financing of the film. It undermines the
producers and distributors in France as well as in China," said Larsen.

The vagaries of Chinese censorship are a Mystery indeed.

• This article appeared in Guardian Weekly
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekly>, which incorporates material from Le
Monde