Bingbing Shatters

"I'm done eating."

Fan Bingbing's little assistant said this, then fled back to her room.

She couldn't stay any longer!

Those two were—

Too much!

Only Shen Shanden and Fan Bingbing remained in the hotel room.

There was none of the blazing passion the assistant had imagined. Instead, the atmosphere was somewhat silent.

Fortunately, neither of them was the awkward, coy type.

Shen Shanden apologized, "Sister Bingbing, I originally wanted to wait until you'd rested before talking to you, but let's clear things up now. When you called me, I'd only just fallen asleep, so I was a little short-tempered."

Fan Bingbing responded with an easy smile and reflected on her own behavior.

"I was at fault too. I put so much into the film, and after finally making it into Berlin's main competition, we came away empty-handed. I was worked up too. I should apologize to you."

The two of them tacitly let the matter pass.

Shen Shanden had made every gesture of goodwill. Coming to the airport to pick her up during the New Year, even if it had been an act, still demonstrated his attitude.

Whether Fan Bingbing still held a grudge or not, she had to act as though she didn't.

Shen Shanden's words might have been blunt, but they weren't wrong. She was the one with no other choice.

After leaving Huayi, she had yet to find another company. Her career was already at its lowest point, and Apple had failed to win anything. Because of compliance issues, its release still wasn't certain.

The importance of the female lead in The Grand Director had suddenly risen.

She needed a commercial film to improve her image. Besides, China Film Group was backing this movie, and there was a major production waiting afterward.

Shen Shanden had both the carrot and the stick!

Even if Shen Shanden did nothing, Fan Bingbing would have to find a way to give herself an out.

Could she really risk offending China Film Group and Han Sanping by leaving the production?

She wasn't that stupid.

Fortunately, Shen Shanden wasn't a mean person. He hadn't used this to torment her and had given her a way out.

Fan Bingbing knew that wasn't something she could take for granted, and she felt grateful.

Although Shen Shanden had initially disrespected her by bringing Chen Hao into the project without informing her, despite Chen Hao's conflict with her, this industry didn't care about right or wrong. When Shen Shanden had the power to keep her in check but chose not to, that already made him a gentleman.

If it had been someone with a bad reputation in the industry, who knew how they might have exploited the matter.

That was reality.

Shen Shanden didn't know what Fan Bingbing was thinking. After all, he was a normal person with basic morals.

Even if he was certain Fan Bingbing would cooperate, he shouldn't have said it in a hurtful way. Some things could be done, but not spoken aloud.

He wanted to resolve the tension between them.

Only then could Fan Bingbing devote herself wholeheartedly to developing her role and ensure the film's quality.

Shen Shanden changed the subject. "Apple didn't lose unfairly to Tuya's Marriage."

Fan Bingbing froze. "You understand art films too?"

Shen Shanden smiled. "The Grand Director was originally an art film. My first plan had been to pursue overseas awards."

"Hm?"

Fan Bingbing's head was full of question marks.

She had read The Grand Director's script several times. It didn't have the slightest trace of an art film.

Suspiciously, she said, "Don't lie to me."

"Why did Tuya's Marriage beat Apple?"

Shen Shanden asked the question back, but without waiting for her answer, he gave one himself. "Tuya's Marriage tells the story of Tuya, forced by the hardships of life to seek a husband while bringing along her disabled ex-husband, Baater."

"According to director Wang Quan'an, the film was originally inspired by concerns over grassland ecological conservation. The relocation of local herders away from pastoral areas was the initial motivation behind the shoot."

"It made the search for a husband to support a former husband, originally set in Gansu, the main plotline, while shifting the setting from the loess plateau of northwest China to the Mongolian grasslands."

"Twisted, unfortunate ethical dilemmas; a negative environmental image; halted development; a primitive landscape."

"It had a much more authentic flavor than Apple! Absolutely perfect!"

"The Berlin Film Festival had the strongest fetish for exposing darkness. Compared to that, Apple's tone was far too weak."

As Shen Shanden spoke, he felt a little envious himself.

He knew this kind of subject matter could win awards, but he couldn't make it.

Even if he did, it wouldn't get approved. Wang Quan'an had an established place, connections, registration, and a license.

With the exact same film, a young director like Shen Shanden would struggle even to get it filed.

"No, you... You haven't even watched the movie, have you?"

Fan Bingbing's headache worsened.

Shen Shanden was extremely confident. "I don't need to watch it. What a film ends up looking like isn't the most important thing. It's not even particularly important."

"Reading the synopsis is enough. Apple is about Liu Pingguo, the character you played, and her husband An Kun, both migrant workers who came to Beijing from elsewhere. The woman worked as a foot-washing attendant in a foot massage parlor, while the man cleaned windows high above the ground."

"Then one day, the foot massage parlor owner, Lin Dong, took advantage of Apple being drunk and raped her. An Kun happened to see it while cleaning windows, so he demanded compensation for his losses."

"Lin Dong's wife had been neglected by her husband because she was infertile, yet she took the initiative to sleep with An Kun. Her reason was that she wanted her husband to wear a green hat too, letting An Kun get revenge."

"That was melodramatic enough too. A guy cleaning high-rise windows in Beijing could earn two or three hundred yuan a day, paid in cash. People had to pay him the moment he finished."

"The bathhouse owner probably didn't have many girls under him who earned as much as he did, and the key was that his money was clean."

Fan Bingbing was stunned. "You understand that too?"

"Of course I do," Shen Shanden said. "For work like high-rise jobs, if someone came from the countryside and knew how to save money, after three to five years in Beijing, he could build a small Western-style house back home and buy a decent car."

Overall, the rules of this land still favored laborers who worked diligently.

At least they didn't have to sell blood to drink coffee.

Shen Shanden gave an objective assessment. "Apple still had that flavor. Its sense of misfortune was very strong. As Master Chen put it, 'On this land, these people spend most of their lives doing nothing but muddling through. So-called glory is merely knowing how to muddle through. A rough road is merely having no way to muddle through. That's basically all there is to it.'"

"That fundamental tone was there."

Shen Shanden had genuinely thought deeply about the path of winning overseas awards.

Generally speaking, to win overseas awards, whether in the films themselves or in what the creators said, there had to be a sense of misfortune.

Struggling with everything they had, merely to stay alive, merely to survive.

There couldn't be happiness or joy; no warmth of family, no sharing among friends, no friends or colleagues with common aspirations; even less could there be a glorious history, heroic spirit, or anything stirring and grand.

Put bluntly, there couldn't even be the life of a normal person.

That was why Shen Shanden had run away. The shit was simply too hard to swallow.

But he still admired those who dared to eat it with such wholehearted relish.

That required talent.

Rare talent.

In an approving tone, Shen Shanden said, "Apple covered the rich-poor divide, the urban-rural gap, and uneven development between western and coastal regions. It satisfied the director's personal sense of morality."

"The problem was that they didn't like it."

Fried.

Fan Bingbing's brain was fried.

Shen Shanden's analysis didn't match the film analysis she knew.

It was far too wrong.

It struck at her beliefs too hard.

What about art? What about filmmaking techniques? He hadn't even discussed the plot.

Yet Shen Shanden hadn't watched the film, but his description was still eight or nine parts accurate. That really was its flavor.

That was why Fan Bingbing found it so hard to accept.

The little knot in her heart was gone, but a far greater wound had appeared.

She felt as though she were falling apart.

"Tell me, what exactly was the problem?"

Fan Bingbing wanted to know where they had lost. She felt Shen Shanden really did understand something.

Even if it would lead to the collapse of beliefs she had once held fast to, she was unwilling to accept it.