At first glance, the Chinese director Lou Ye’s newest film looks like a departure from form.

乍一看，中国导演娄烨的新作似乎偏离了他一贯的风格。

It does not touch on the taboo subjects, like China’s coronavirus lockdowns or the Tiananmen Square massacre, that earned him the moniker “the king of banned films.” It does not examine how ordinary Chinese respond to a changing society, the animating question of Mr. Lou’s oeuvre. There isn’t even dialogue, only music.

这部电影没有触及那些为他赢得“禁片之王”绰号的禁忌题材——比如中国的新冠封控或六四事件。它也没有探讨普通中国人如何应对不断变化的社会，而这本是娄烨作品中最核心的命题。影片甚至没有对白，只有音乐。

It is a concert film about a Chinese rock band, ReTROS — Mr. Lou’s first foray into nonfiction after decades of feature films.

这是一部关于中国摇滚乐队“重塑雕像的权利”的演唱会电影——也是娄烨数十年来剧情片创作后首次涉足非虚构领域。

For Mr. Lou, these differences are mostly semantic. “The distinction we draw between feature films and documentaries is a mistake,” Mr. Lou, 60, said in an interview at his studio in Beijing, not long after the film, “Re-TROS ‘After the Applause,’” made its premiere in the city last fall.

对娄烨而言，这些差异在很大程度上只是形式上的区别。“我们把剧情片和纪录片截然分开，这本身就是一个错误，”去年秋天在他的电影《重塑雕像的权利“喝彩之后”南京演唱会》在北京首映后不久，现年60岁的娄烨在位于北京的工作室接受采访时说。

“As long as there’s a camera pointed at you, reality has already subtly changed,” he said.

“只要有摄像机对着你，现实就已经发生了微妙的改变，”他说。

A resistance to clear lines or categories runs through Mr. Lou’s work — and his life.

对明晰界限和分类的抗拒一直贯穿着娄烨的作品，也贯穿着他的人生。

His shaky, hand-held camerawork evokes realism, but the stories are often dreamlike or fantastical. The films start with real moments in Chinese history but feature mysterious look-alikes and stories within stories.

他手持摄像机摇晃的镜头营造出一种现实主义感，但故事往往如梦境般，甚至带有奇幻色彩。影片常常以中国历史的真实时刻出发，却充斥着长相相似的神秘人物，以及层层嵌套的故事。

He is best known for his clashes with Chinese censors, who have barred about half of his films from screening in the country. (He is sometimes compared to Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director who has been jailed for his films.) But Mr. Lou has also made movies released widely in Chinese theaters, featuring big budgets and even bigger stars, sometimes while battling censors on another film at the same time.

他最广为人知的是与中国审查机构的冲突，他约有半数的电影被禁止在国内公映。（因此，他有时被比作因电影入狱的伊朗导演贾法尔·帕纳西。）但娄烨也执导过在中国院线广泛上映的电影，这些作品预算庞大，明星云集，有时他甚至是在与审查机构就另一部影片周旋的同时，完成这些商业片的制作。

Some Chinese filmmakers defy censorship early in their careers, then shift solidly into the mainstream; others remain on the fringes. Few have moved so continuously between the two.

有些中国导演在职业生涯早期挑战审查制度，随后完全进入主流；还有一些则始终停留在边缘地带。但很少有人像他这样，持续在两者之间来回穿梭。

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Mr. Lou said, when asked about that feat.

当被问到这一点时，娄烨说：“你说这是好事还是坏事？”

娄烨工作室里的《颐和园》和《风中有朵雨做的云》电影海报。

While his films have been honored at Cannes and Venice, he said he wanted most to reach a Chinese audience, who would be most likely to understand them. He has accepted significant cuts to some films to see them released domestically. (The concert film is awaiting approval for wider release.)

尽管他的电影已在戛纳和威尼斯电影节上获奖，但他表示自己最渴望的仍是触达中国观众，因为他们最有可能理解他的作品。为了能让一些电影在国内上映，他接受了大幅删减。（这部演唱会电影目前仍在等待更广泛上映的许可。）

Mr. Lou’s wife and frequent screenwriter, Ma Yingli, said in an interview that they tried not to think about censorship until submitting a movie for review. “If you do that, you’ll never be able to make a film,” she said. “If problems arise later, you can try to find solutions,” she added, such as cuts or edits.

娄烨的妻子、也是他经常合作的编剧马英力在采访中说，他们在把电影送审之前，尽量不去考虑审查问题。“如果那样做，你就永远拍不出电影，”她说。“如果之后真的出现问题，再想办法解决。”她补充道，比如删减或修改。

But some topics felt so urgent, Mr. Lou said, that he would not have been able to continue making films if he had not addressed them. That was true of “Summer Palace,” his 2006 film about disillusioned lovers after the Tiananmen massacre, because of his experience as a student during the demonstrations. It was also true of “An Unfinished Film,” a metafictional look at filmmaking under lockdown, because he felt the pandemic had redefined the relationship between people, screens and reality.

但娄烨表示，有些题材让他感觉如此紧迫，以至于如果不将其呈现出来，他就无法继续拍电影。2006年的《颐和园》便是如此，这部影片讲述了关于天安门事件后梦想幻灭的恋人们的故事，因为他本人在学生时代亲身经历过那些示威抗议活动。他的新片《一部未完成的电影》亦是如此，这部以元虚构（metafictional，也被称为后设，译注）手法展现疫情封锁期间电影拍摄的影片，源于他深切感受到疫情重新定义了人与人、人与屏幕以及人与现实之间的关系。

“Generally speaking, if you don’t violate an artist’s basic expression, I think restrictions and obstacles are quite normal,” he said. “But if you push past that point, the artist may push back.”

他说：“一般来说，只要不侵犯艺术家最基本的表达，我认为限制和障碍都是很正常的。但如果越过了那条线，艺术家可能就会反抗。”

He described this reaction as reflexive, out of his control. “That’s not about cinema anymore,” he said.

他把这种反应形容为一种本能的反射，不受自己控制。“那已经不是电影本身的问题了，”他说。

Mr. Lou was born in Shanghai, to an actor and an acting teacher. At age 20, in 1985, he enrolled at the Beijing Film Academy to study directing.

娄烨出生于上海，父母分别是演员和表演教师。1985年，20岁的他考入北京电影学院学习导演。

It was a time of heady experimentation, as China’s leaders loosened their grip on the economy and, cautiously, culture. The graduates from the academy in those years later became known as the pioneers of Chinese underground cinema. They made low-budget films documenting the unglamorous side of China’s boom and did not submit them to the state film administration, meaning they could not enter theaters.

那是一个大胆实验的时代，中国领导层开始放松对经济的控制，同时也谨慎地放宽了对文化的管制。那些年从电影学院毕业的学生后来成为中国地下电影的先锋人物。他们拍摄低成本电影，记录中国经济繁荣背后不那么光鲜的一面，并且不向国家电影局送审，这意味着他们的电影无法进入影院。

Mr. Lou’s breakout film was “Suzhou River” in 2000, a noirish tale of a man searching for his lost lover in a seedy, industrial Shanghai. It was Mr. Lou’s first encounter with international acclaim, winning a prize at the Rotterdam film festival, but also his first major run-in with the authorities. Because he had not obtained officials’ permission to submit the film to the festival, they banned him from making movies for two years.

娄烨的成名作是2000年的《苏州河》，这是一部带有黑色电影风格的作品，讲述一个男人在破败的、工业化的上海寻找失踪恋人的故事。这部影片为他赢得了国际声誉，在鹿特丹电影节获奖，但也让他第一次与当局发生重大冲突。由于他未经官方同意就把影片送去参加电影节，结果被禁止拍片两年。

“Summer Palace,” the 2006 Tiananmen movie, earned him another five-year ban on filmmaking. He shot his next film, “Spring Fever,” in secret. A gay romance, it was released in 2009.

2006年以天安门事件为题材的影片《颐和园》让他再次被禁拍片五年。他的下一部作品《春风沉醉的夜晚》是在秘密状态下拍摄完成的。这部讲述同性恋情的影片于2009年上映。

In recent years, Mr. Lou has also made films marketed more at mass audiences, such as “Saturday Fiction,” a World War II spy story starring the Chinese superstar Gong Li. But even those films deploy techniques that may put off casual moviegoers, like jump cuts and subtle social commentary, said Sheldon Lu, a scholar of Chinese cinema at the University of California, Davis.

近年来，娄烨也拍摄了一些面向更大众市场的影片，例如由中国影星巩俐主演的二战间谍故事《兰心大剧院》。但加州大学戴维斯分校研究中国电影的学者鲁晓鹏表示，即便是在这些影片中，他也运用了可能让普通观众不太适应的手法，比如跳切剪辑和含蓄的社会评论。

娄烨执导的电影《苏州河》和《春风沉醉的夜晚》的海报。

Many of Mr. Lou’s classmates at the Beijing Film Academy are now among China’s most successful directors, in part because they have embraced mainstream or even nationalistic filmmaking, such as odes to the Chinese military, Professor Lu said. But Mr. Lou “holds onto his principles, his aesthetics.”

鲁晓鹏教授说，娄烨在北京电影学院的许多同学如今已成为中国最成功的导演，部分原因是他们拥抱了主流甚至民族主义的电影创作，例如歌颂中国军队。但娄烨“坚持自己的原则和美学”。

Indeed, after “Saturday Fiction” was widely promoted in Chinese state media, Mr. Lou again broached a Chinese government taboo: pandemic lockdowns, in “An Unfinished Film.” Released abroad in 2024, it is unavailable in China.

事实上，在《兰心大剧院》获得中国官方媒体广泛宣传之后，娄烨再次触碰了中国政府的禁忌：在《一部未完成的电影》中讨论疫情封控。该片于2024年在国外发行，目前在中国无法看到。

Despite his maverick image, Mr. Lou is a restrained presence. A self-proclaimed introvert, he has worked with the same actors for many of his films, in part, he joked, because he is uncomfortable meeting new people.

尽管有着特立独行的形象，娄烨本人却相当内敛。他自称是个内向的人，在许多电影中反复与同一批演员合作，他开玩笑说，部分原因是他不习惯结交新朋友。

But he sometimes shows flashes of childlike delight — or defiance. While Mr. Lou was making “The Shadow Play,” a film about corruption during China’s economic opening, Ms. Ma shot a behind-the-scenes documentary. In one scene, Mr. Lou grins widely after capturing a shot he likes and mimics the sound of an explosion.

但他偶尔也会流露出孩子气的喜悦——或者说叛逆。在娄烨拍摄讲述中国经济开放时期腐败问题的《风中有朵雨做的云》时，马英力拍摄了一部幕后纪录片。其中有一个镜头，娄烨在拍到一个满意的镜头后咧嘴大笑，还模仿爆炸的声音。

But later in the documentary, when censors demand extensive cuts to “The Shadow Play,” Mr. Lou declares that he would rather it never be released.

但在纪录片后面的一段里，当审查机构要求对《风中有朵雨做的云》进行大幅删减时，娄烨表示自己宁愿这部电影永远不要上映。

A member of his team fires back, “Do the rest of us eat?”

他团队的一名成员反驳道：“那我们其他人还吃不吃饭了？”

After two years of negotiations with officials, the movie was released in China in 2019. At the premiere, Mr. Lou tersely told the audience that he had left in signs of deletions and changes, as proof of the censors’ interference: “These are all things I want the audience to be aware of.”

经过与官员长达两年的协商，这部电影最终于2019年在中国的院线上映。在首映式上，娄烨简短地对观众说，他刻意保留了影片中的删减和修改痕迹，以此作为审查干预的证据：“这些都是我希望观众注意到的。”

Mr. Lou said “The Shadow Play” was probably the film on which he had made the most compromises. Still, he said it was worthwhile to give Chinese moviegoers a record of their collective experience, even if it could be only a “second-rate” version, as Mr. Lou once described it, because of censorship.

娄烨说，《风中有朵雨做的云》大概是他做出妥协最多的一部电影。但他仍然认为，让中国观众看到一份关于他们共同经历的记录是值得的，即使因为审查，这只能是一部——正如他曾经描述的那样——“二流版本”的作品。

His willingness to negotiate may also speak to his desire for audiences, both at home and overseas, to talk about something other than censorship.

他愿意与审查机构周旋，或许也说明了他希望国内外观众能关注审查之外的话题。

娄烨是少数几位似乎持续在边缘与主流之间游走的中国电影人之一。

“Everything gets simplified into political or nonpolitical,” he said. “It completely destroys the dialogue between the film and the public,” the right of audiences to interpret a film as they like.

“一切都被简化为政治或非政治，”他说。“这完全破坏了电影与公众之间的对话”，也剥夺了观众按照自己的喜好解读电影的权利。

“It strips away the film’s value as entertainment,” he said, “or as a cinematic language.”

“它剥离了电影作为娱乐的价值，”他说，“或者作为一种电影语言的价值。”

Mr. Lou’s new concert documentary is, essentially, all cinematic language. He said he had sought to let the band’s music, of which he is a longtime fan, speak for itself.

娄烨的新演唱会纪录片本质上几乎完全是电影语言的呈现。他说，自己希望让这支乐队的音乐——他多年来一直很喜欢——自己说话。

After the premiere in Beijing, Mr. Lou briefly took the stage. He urged the audience to be open to the diversity of movies that a director could make.

在北京首映式结束后，娄烨短暂登台发言。他呼吁观众对导演可以创作的多样化电影类型保持开放态度。

“There are many different types of movies,” he said. “So I hope people will pay attention.”

“电影有很多不同类型，”他说。“所以我希望大家能关注它们。”