Sitting beside Lirde Bargoin was none other than Natalie Berkin, the female lead of Plagiarism. At thirty-seven, she was at the peak of her career, having won the Academy Award for Best Actress just two years ago.
"Destroy him? I thought you wanted to protect him," Natalie Berkin whispered. When she saw Su Shiyi raise the sword to end his own life, she had wanted to rush onto the stage and embrace him. Whether it was motherly instinct or simply her weakness for a beautiful face, she found him unbearably heart-wrenching.
"A fine piece of porcelain, inlaid with the gems of the British Queen's crown, blessed by the goddess Athena. Beautiful, yet fragile," Bargoin murmured. "If you were to own such a treasure, my advice would be: do not touch it. Because the moment you do, deep down you will feel the urge to shatter it.
Freud called this instinct the death drive. The urge to destroy, to break apart, is as innate as the desire to survive," Bargoin continued softly, eyes fixed on Su Shiyi's image on the silver screen. "He is that porcelain."
"His smile could bring springtime to the world, and his tears could make the earth tremble. To describe him with precision is like wielding a surgeon's scalpel," Natalie Berkin replied.
Bargoin still withheld one thought. If this actor were to star in a purely gay romance film, with looks like his, he could unify the aesthetic taste of men, women, and even those in between.
Why not say it aloud? Because the idea that had lingered in his mind for years was now finally crystallizing…
The film ran for nearly three hours, spanning decades of narrative. When it ended, the audience was left crushed by its heavy, suffocating weight.
Foreign viewers could hardly empathize with that particular era, but the suffering of an artist was enough to stir sympathy.
Among the audience buried under that oppressive atmosphere, two people were exceptions. One was Bargoin, lost in his own script, and the other was Chu Zhi.
"Oh, I never thought my acting could be this good. Aunt Wang's training really went beyond technique. She shaped both form and spirit," Chu Zhi muttered to himself after the screening, quick to praise his own brilliance.
Contentment was happiness. Chu Zhi left the Palazzo del Cinema, decided to rest a while in a café, then perhaps check out Plagiarism, the film people had spoken of the previous night.
The film festival, of course, carried on regardless of Chu Zhi's movements, and the Palazzo buzzed with excitement.
When the film ended, committee members brought in credentialed journalists to interview director Wang Anyi. She politely deflected, pushing the attention toward his deputy Zhao Yusheng, while she herself caught up with old friends.
These were no ordinary acquaintances. All were established actors and directors, big names in the industry.
Bargoin and Wang Anyi had crossed paths a few times. There were countless directors in the world, but only a handful sat at the peak of the pyramid.
Bargoin had hardly watched the film earlier, distracted by his own plotting. A faint guilt lingered. He decided he would see it again later to appease that guilt, then approached to exchange greetings.
After some pleasantries, he revealed his true intent. "Mrs. Wang, might you introduce me to the film's male lead?"
Wang Anyi looked around. The actor had just been there, but now he was gone.
"He must have gone to another hall for a screening," Wang said. "If you wish to meet him, Mr. Bargoin, I can introduce you tonight or tomorrow."
"My thanks," Bargoin replied.
Their exchange was in English, since Bargoin did not speak Chinese and Wang did not speak French.
Roughly half an hour later, Chu Zhi arrived to watch Plagiarism. He clutched the Blue Book, a precise schedule of all screenings during the ten-day festival. In Berlin the book was distributed free, but in Venice it cost money to purchase.
Plagiarism told an absurd tale. A female designer plagiarized her colleague's work, won a top architectural prize, and to cover her tracks used schemes to drive her colleague's family out of the city.
Years later, a train station constructed from her award-winning blueprint collapsed due to faulty weight-bearing design, thrusting her into scandal.
Fired and desperate, she believed her colleague had ruined her life. So she traveled to the city where they now lived and shot them dead.
"What kind of insane story is this… what did the colleague ever do to deserve this?" Chu Zhi muttered, baffled and frustrated by the narrative.
But from Bargoin's perspective, the female lead was not pure villain. Her plagiarism stemmed from desperation, from craving that one chance. Not a justification, but a way of blurring moral lines.
If even a sliver of sympathy arose for the protagonist, then viewers would be forced into self-reflection. That was precisely Bargoin's goal: to reveal that everyone is selfish.
Chu Zhi's verdict: The director's brain must have a screw loose.
Two films in one day were plenty. Chu Zhi returned to his hotel, ready to focus on his true career: music. Acting was just a side venture.
His English-language album was still stuck, so he switched to working on the Chinese one. He drafted plots for the music videos and outlined the desired effects.
His previous album, Little Fruits Are Sweet, had been widely praised, though fans complained about the lack of music videos. This time, with fifteen songs, he decided each would get its own MV. Fifteen was not excessive.
No, not excessive at all. Worth careful thought.
Once Chu Zhi entered work mode, he often forgot to eat. Hours passed, and by the time he finished drafting, mealtime was long gone. He stepped out to grab a casual dinner.
Before leaving he froze. "Wait, I forgot something… Ah, right!"
He called Sister Niu. After chatting about the album arrangements, he asked, "This year's Orange Festival grew from three hundred attendees to four hundred, but I still hardly get to meet fans. Could I maybe perform at some music festivals?"
Music festivals? China's three major ones—Midi, Modern Sky, and Strawberry—had never invited Chu Zhi. Simply put, they could not afford him.
"I'll see if I can arrange something," Niu Jiangxue said.
"Then I'll leave it in your hands, Sister Niu," Chu Zhi replied, ending the call.
The third day on Lido Island dawned cloudy.
Director Wang brought Chu Zhi to meet the French director Lierd Bargoin. The latter wasted no time, stating directly that he had a script perfect for Chu Zhi.
"I've envisioned a fantastical world," Bargoin explained. "In this world, men are weaker than women, so society is matriarchal. Gender roles are entirely reversed."
At first Chu Zhi thought this would be a feminist film. But as Bargoin elaborated, he realized the scope was much broader.
The story centered on a girl named Cynthia, who witnessed the tale of a handsome man named Senasis in northern France and Luxembourg during World War II.
With his wife killed in battle, Senasis became a widower. Too handsome for his own good, and an outsider at that, his life grew ever more difficult…
"To admire beauty, to perceive beauty, is one of the root causes of chaos and strife in human society. Beauty is the original sin," Bargoin said. "Greed, lust, envy—those are the sins born beneath it."
His core concept was simple. "Where beauty exists, war will follow. Because there will always be someone who wants to possess it."
It was a bleak idea, extreme and pessimistic, but perhaps that was what made it compelling.
Yet the story struck Chu Zhi as strangely familiar. In his previous life on Earth, he had seen something like it.
Then it hit him. "Wait a second… isn't this just a male version of Malèna?"
The more he compared, the more similar it became. He could vividly recall the iconic scene of Monica Bellucci's character sitting while men lined up to light her cigarette.
So why bother setting it in a reversed world at all?
"Mr. Bargoin, if I may ask, why not simply make Senasis a woman in a realistic setting? Wouldn't the story still hold, and perhaps feel more authentic?" Chu Zhi questioned.
"I'm glad you raised that," Bargoin replied, gesturing with his hand. "It shows you thought seriously about my story. But if it were a beautiful woman destroyed for her looks—well, history has shown us countless such cases. I do not wish to tell that tale again. I want to show that beauty itself is the original sin.
By reversing the gender roles in a fantastical world, the dissonance will force audiences to confront my message.
God should never have given us the ability to distinguish beauty and ugliness, not when He already gave us emotions like anger, joy, and sorrow," Bargoin said, his eyes fixed firmly on the Chinese star before him.
Chu Zhi replied calmly, "But without the ability to perceive beauty, most art would collapse. The world would be unbearably dull."
"Yes, but then there would be no wars," Bargoin countered.
"What nonsense," Chu Zhi thought. Even the blind fight over desire and greed. Still, he let it go.
"Mr. Chu, please consider it. You would be perfect for Senasis," Bargoin urged.
"I will give it serious thought," Chu Zhi promised. Inwardly, however, he wondered: how well had Malèna performed at the box office? If acting overshadowed his singing career, that could be troublesome.
They parted ways, each off to see different screenings. Chu Zhi chose a historical drama. Bargoin picked a film so risqué that even the posters had to be censored. As he reached the door, he froze.
Something felt strange.
Their earlier conversation had been oddly comfortable. That was what unsettled him.
After a long pause, realization struck. "Wait… Mr. Chu spoke to me entirely in French!"
His French had been so fluent that Bargoin hadn't even noticed. With no language barrier, the script in his mind suddenly seemed all the more possible.
Over the next few days, Chu Zhi kept up his routine of watching two films daily. He disliked overly pretentious art films, but could appreciate genuine artistry. The rest of his time, he spent buried in planning.
A week later, he had completed all fifteen MV proposals, neatly arranged in a chart and sent to Sister Niu.
September 10 arrived, the closing night of the Venice Film Festival. The red carpet of the awards ceremony was even livelier than the opening.
No one knew yet how many awards Shiyi Lang would claim.