On May 8, the official website of the Cannes Film Festival updated the project manual for the out-of-competition film “She’s Got No Name”, including new stills and posters, a short -storylines, detailed introductions to actors/role and creative ideas:
By: Zhang Ziyi, Wang Chuanjun, Yi Yang Qianxi, Zhao Liying, Lei Jiayin, Yang Mi, Dapeng, Li Xian, Fan Wei, Ji Sha, Zhang Zifeng
Plot summary:
The story is adapted from one of China’s most famous unsolved cases (the murder of her husband in Jiang Yuan Nong). During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the 1940’s, in a busy street, a woman named Zhan Zhou was accused of bloody dismembering her husband, a seemingly non-murder. able to achieve it alone. The case put her out, put her to the test with public opinion, and made her destiny intertwine with the heads of her country.
Character introduction:
· Zhang Ziyi plays Zhan Zhoushi
In an era when low-ranking women did not have names, Zhanzhou was named as a combination of her master’s and her husband’s surnames. When her husband’s remains were found, she first admitted that she had been killed, but later she repented. She is facing a high-profile trial that could lead to her death, when she develops an unexpected will to live.
· Wang Chuanjun plays “Big Bear”
“Big Bear” is Zhan Zhou’s husband. He once worked as an appraiser in a pen shop.
· Yi Yang Qianxi plays Song (pinyin of name, same as below)
Song is a blind reporter who lives downstairs from Zhan Zhou’s house. As the personification of what happened, Song provides the film’s characters with uncertain results of fortune, which some take as guidance and others dismiss.
· Zhao Liying plays Xi Lin
Xi Lin is a writer, playwright, and socialist. After Xi Lin’s play was suddenly withdrawn, she came across another possible one: a work focusing on the case of Zhan Zhou, known as the “killer”. Xi Lin quickly took the opportunity from this high-profile case to try to save her career from its dire state.
· Lei Jiayin plays Xue Zhi-Wu
Xue Zhi-Wu is a deputy chief of police who works for the Japanese puppet system He strongly believes that his actions are just and never thinks about the possibility of treason. After hearing Zhan Zhou’s confession, Xue tried to quickly close the matter, but found that he had greatly underestimated her resilience.
· Yang Mi plays Wang Xu-Mei
Wang Xu-Mei is Zhan Zhou’s prisoner and is respectfully referred to as the “elder sister” in the prison. She was first a popular dancer in Shanghai. Her life changed dramatically after she was found holding refugees, but she was sure she would eventually be released.
· Dapeng plays Ho Hui-Xian
Wang Xu-Mei was one of Zhan Zhou’s neighbors at the time of the murder. A withdrawn and shy blacksmith with no apparent connection to the case, he was initially ignored by the police investigation, but his real role in the last event. water surface.
· Li Xian plays Zhang Bao-Fu
Zhang Bao-Fu was a friend of “Big Bear” and he introduced the latter to gambling, and he tried to make profits by taking advantage of his friend’s debts and the situation of Zhan Zhou family. Zhang is indifferent to the consequences of his actions until he is suddenly suspected of murder.
· Fan Wei plays Ye Bo-Xiu
Ye Bo-Xiu is a lawyer at the largest law firm in Shanghai – the owner of the firm is his son-in-law. He went to Zhan Zhoushi and promised to let him take the case back, leaving Zhan Zhoushi wondering what the other party could get from him.
· Ji Sha plays Chen Kai-Zhou
Chen Kai-Zhou is a law graduate who has just returned from the United States. He and partner Ye Bo-Xiu are up in the case of Zhan Zhou. Full of determination to change the status quo of Chinese women, Chen’s ideology is tested by the complex reality.
· Zhang Zifeng plays Ye Nian-Zhi
Ye Nian-Zhi is the daughter of Ye Bo-Xiu, who agreed to marry her father’s boss, the owner of a major law firm in Shanghai, despite the huge age difference. But behind the wealth and comfort that this marriage gave her, there was a sinister undercurrent.
Creative idea (excerpt):
· Director Chen Kexin
I started developing this project eight years ago. It was a murder mystery that drew me in at first, but then I found myself more interested in how Zhan Zhou’s fate was intertwined with that of his motherland – from Shanghai at the period of Japanese occupation of China during the Kuomintang period, to the birth of the People’s Republic of China. A statement like this not only includes her fate, but also includes several characters in that turbulent time. Not all characters are black and white, right or wrong. When the world around you is so complex, your life cannot be so simple.
Knowing this, I focused on the story of a marriage conversion. Today, we understand that when a marriage breaks down, it is better to divorce. But in this story – perhaps unusual for her time – Zhang Ziyi’s character would either be beaten to death, or she would kill her husband and kill him so that he could not see in the next life. She has feudal ideals but she has an amazing resilience, which brings more layers of complexity and contradiction to her character, and in turn makes me have more questions in my mind: What kind of person is in her?
Perhaps it is suffering, a theme that appears many times in my films, that drew me to this trip, this time placed behind the image of a “troubled” female figure.
· Photographer Bao Xuanming
The Japanese setting in Shanghai in the 1940s may not be familiar to Western audiences, but it is a common setting for Chinese films, and we wanted to create a unique interpretation of this period with a modern feel.
Peter Chan’s other films usually feature a lot of content, but this film is different because it strives to limit the number of roles the actors can play. Carefully planned on how to capture the performance of the actors, the mise-en-scene works to maximize the value of every angle. It usually takes 2 or 3 hours to build a scene, then shoot one camera at a time.
· Costume and makeup designer Wu Lilu
From our early conversations, it was clear that director Peter Chan wanted to present each actor in a completely new light. He imagined roles that Zhang Ziyi and Lei Jiayin had never played before. Therefore, the themes we pursue are “novelty” and “surprise”.
There is one skirt in particular – the cheongsam worn by Zhang Ziyi in the poster She got when she took wedding pictures, and that was the dress she wore when she killed her husband. This represents the two poles of his energy: beauty and happiness, and extreme cruelty. The director’s words inspired me: “Think of this skirt as if it were Zhan Zhou himself. Look like. The effect is very impressive: a broken and bloody keongsam gives a sense of corruption.
· Art director Sun Li
The film is set in the 1940s, a time when there is not much left in the real world. Director Peter Chan and I were scouting locations in Tianjin and Shanghai. Then we had to carefully plan government agencies, law offices, courtrooms, factories, prisons, docks, police stations. We tried to be unconventional, with courtrooms designed in a minimalist style, prisons designed with cinematic shapes and scales, and factories designed to reflect the identities and classes of the characters. Our goal is not to recreate old Shanghai, but to promote the actors’ performances and immerse the audience in them.
In the script, Detective Xue’s continuous visits and investigations of Jiang Yuanong’s murder scene gave me a lot of inspiration. Starting from this point, we enter the mysterious streets and alleys of Shanghai, literary scenes of style and contemporary, all set in a world affected by war and changing political conditions. Having built such a vivid view of the world, we put the happenings of ordinary people in the background of major historical events.
