Girlfriends are probably the highest level of girls dividing friends, and as they get older, the truth under the powder seems to become complicated. I don't know when the word girlfriend began to be demonized because of the "things" between girls. Even Mimon said that he couldn't understand it, and asked back, "How did the word 'girlfriend' become a derogatory term?" ", there are also 5 rules of girlfriends who have been carefully formulated. However, when it comes to girlfriends, Huang Zhenzhen, a well-known female director in Hong Kong, has more say.
In 2014, Huang Zhenzhen's "Girlfriend" was a great success. As the first sister tao romantic comedy in Chinese, "Girlfriend" not only has a light-hearted and hilarious friendship and a tangled love story, but also presents three representative female characters with different personalities to the audience.
On March 2, 2018, Huang Zhenzhen returned to the big screen with "Girlfriend 2". Unlike "Girlfriend", "Girlfriend 2" has less love; like "Girlfriend", Huang Zhenzhen has been breaking through herself and constantly trying new possibilities.
"Girlfriend 2" tells the story of how after Qiao Li proposed to Xi Wen, Kimmy excitedly prepared to take Xi Wen to Vietnam to start a crazy single journey, who knew that Xi Wen arranged for Kimmy's "nemesis" Jia Lan and Qiao Li's cousin Jing Jing to accompany him. That night, Xiaomei, who was filming in Vietnam, prepared a grand villa party for everyone, but Kimmy and Jia Lan made the scene out of control because of gambling and drinking. After a night of drunkenness, everyone wakes up to find Jingjing missing, and Jialan, Kimmy and a box of gold in the narrow narrow road are inexplicably handcuffed together. Immediately, the girlfriend group receives a mysterious phone call, asking them to spend all the gold bars in one day. When the three panicked, another car gang came to pursue them. In order to escape, in order to rescue Jingjing, in order to solve the mystery, the girlfriends embarked on a ridiculous escape journey.
"Don't regret trying women's comedy movies,
I want to create a more way for female actors."
We often hear the phrase "the winner doesn't change," which means that the winner just needs to stick to his or her own method of winning.
"Girlfriend" was a big dark horse in the Chinese film market at both the box office and the word of mouth, and it seems more logical to continue to move towards the path of romantic comedy movies. However, this maverick female director who constantly refreshes the box office record of Hong Kong female directors is not satisfied with this, "The Five Years I made before, "The Five Years That Were Stolen", "Girlfriend", "Disappeared Lover", are all emotion-based, and many viewers have told me that every time they watch my movie, they will cry, director Huang Zhenzhen, can you not make a crying scene? You know that when you shoot emotional scenes, it is inevitable that there will be sensational bridges. Therefore, "Girlfriend 2" I just want to innovate and don't take the main sensational route. Of course, I don't think the emotions between girlfriends are necessarily the fact that we are always crying and crying together, and we all have a side of traveling, adventurous, drunk, or crazy with our sisters. ”
The results of the pursuit of breakthroughs are always unpredictable, and no matter how brilliant the director can not guarantee, every film in his career will please all audiences. After the release of "Girlfriend 2", some viewers were difficult to accept the change in style of "Girlfriend 2", and Huang Zhenzhen also bravely shared her true thoughts.
"I also feel sorry for the results that disappointed the audience. Unfortunately, there are two aspects: the first is to disappoint the audience who likes "Girlfriend" so much; the second is that on my creative journey, it may be wrong to choose to make a comedy movie in the "Girlfriend" series, but I still don't regret trying female comedy. If you start again, you won't put it on the girlfriend series. The reason why I chose pure female comedy is because there has never been a female comedy, and the previous comedies were mainly male protagonists. Women do comedy as protagonists, and really haven't done it before. If the breakthrough is successful, it will give our women's films one more way, one more style, and also allow us to expand the film genre a little. ”
For Huang Zhenzhen, the only constant may be to enjoy change.
"My personality is black or white, no gray color"
Compared with the labels of "feminism" and "avant-garde", "breakthrough" seems to be more in line with Huang Zhenzhen's heart, in her own words: "Rebellion is deep to the bone". The high-caliber graduate of New York University's film department did countless crazy things as a student. In order to raise money for filmmaking, he took out all the money to buy stocks, and in less than three months he was in debt of nearly 800,000 yuan; he did not open his mouth to his parents for money to pay for the debt, worked as a bartender in a bar, dressed as a Chinese doll, stood in the park to hand out flyers, and sold insurance to pay off debts. At the same time, the dream of film has never been extinguished, and it is daily to use the gap between part-time jobs to create scripts.
Art comes from life, and Huang Zhenzhen's works are always on the road of "breakthrough". The famous work "Woman's Words" shows the modern women's outlook on life, values, and especially their experience of sex in the form of a documentary. This is true even for commercial films, with "The Vanishing Lover" adding an element of suspense to the romance; "Girlfriend" is the first sisterly romantic comedy in a Chinese film. "Girlfriend 2" is the first all-female comedy film in a Chinese film.
"There are adventures and breakthroughs in my personality, without which, a few years ago, I would not have drifted north from Hong Kong to the mainland to make a "Tears of the Fallen City", I would have been a person who liked to try new things. Because I'm bolder, I want my life to try something different. But I have to admit that I don't succeed every time in the process of trying, so I am taking a risk-taking mentality. I feel like a lot of things are not everything that men can do and women can do. But as a female director I still have a responsibility to try, because if the attempt is successful, it can really give women a lot of encouragement, that is, we can try what we like to do, rather than being compromised by social pressure. Of course, I said that not every attempt will be successful, but I think female comedies can have, or female action movies can have a future, if not try how to succeed. Female comedies can certainly be filmed, but this time the direction of female comedy has not been recognized by the audience, and the director has not resonated with the audience, which does not mean that female comedies have no future. ”
"But I'm not a greedy person, and although I want to give myself a new challenge every time, it doesn't mean that I can shoot any scene, I'm not this kind of person." Instead, I hope that every time I add an element, I will give the audience and give myself a little freshness, so that I can make progress. For example, to make another scene like "The Five Years That Were Stolen", I think it is a waste. Every time I shoot a play, I hope that each one has room for improvement, whether it is good for myself or the audience, that is, not to waste my life. You can't just make money, repeat to shoot a thing that you haven't broken through, and the audience may feel tired after watching it. I'm 'hearty' at this point. ”
Huang Zhenzhen once again stressed: "I do not regret this attempt."
"Every movie I make is very hard"
Since the release of the film, departmental audiences have expressed different views on the film through different channels. For these not-so-friendly evaluations, Huang Zhenzhen admitted to accepting them with an open heart. "'Girlfriend' is an emotional drama, and the audience already has a strong need to continue 'Girlfriend', so suddenly changing the style is like he obviously wants to eat hot pot, you have to let him eat steak, he simply doesn't have space to think whether the steak is good or not. Because I didn't want to eat steak, I wanted to eat hot pot. ”
"At this moment, I received a lot of very bad reviews, such as this film is not like Huang Zhenzhen's movie, or misunderstanding that I did not make a movie with my heart, I was cheating the audience's money." In fact, none of the above is, it really is not, I really shoot with my heart. So this time I saw everyone's evaluation I was quite uncomfortable, quite sad. I won't say I don't feel it, I'm sad, but sad is sad, I still have to reflect, calm down and think. But I will not give up, and I have never given up, and I will continue to use my sincerity to shoot. This is something I can definitely promise to an audience that likes me. ”
Although there are some crises in the evaluation of the film, Huang Zhenzhen has taken on all the responsibilities very responsibly, and there are only words of praise for the three heroines. "The positioning of women, the positioning of actresses is to be beautiful, Sven, there are few movies that make actresses very relaxed to act in comedy, usually pay attention to their own dress, to be beautiful and image." I think the three heroines in "Girlfriend 2" are really breaking through, that is, they put real-life madness in it. I think their performances are very good. Then the three of them were already very comedic, so I thought this attempt was a breakthrough. Of course, I see that a lot of the audience is not receptive. So again, as I just said, I also took a class. The three heroines are really hard and very engaged, for example, going to the bar with the muscle man in this scene, the start of the work is very early, it is five o'clock in the morning, they hope to put themselves in a little, come to the scene will drink a little liquor, in order to be more engaged. They do act very well, and some audiences don't like the style of "Girlfriend 2", but please enjoy their play. ”
In the interview, there are two things that Huang Zhenzhen is very insistent on. First, "Girlfriend 2" is a sincere work, very attentive. The second is that women's comedy films will definitely have a future.
"Now that I've seen some feedback from mainland netizens, I may think that this kind of laughter is not acceptable to mainland audiences." So this time all aspects of the feedback, the opinions and even the attacks I gave me more understanding that I want to continue, but also to work harder to learn to understand the style and taste of the mainland, especially comedy. I am still a person who loves movies, although many viewers have a very bad evaluation of me this time, I also hope that they can understand, I still work hard to make movies, not very casual to make comedy. This time there must be a problem, and I am still reflecting on whether my personal decisions and tastes are in great contrast with mainland netizens in comedy. I'm still reflecting on this aspect, so I'd love to use this opportunity to tell all the audiences, especially the fans of "Girlfriend", that it's really embarrassing to disappoint you. This was not a casual decision at all. "Girlfriend 2" is still a scene that I work very hard and make very hard. Because when I was shooting in Vietnam, I encountered the environment, threats and other aspects of things, the three heroines and I are very hard, it can be said that "Girlfriend 2" is the hardest of so many movies I have made in so many years, but I did not expect that the response after the release was the worst. ”
"I don't want to say that 'Girlfriend 2' determines that women don't like to watch female comedies, I think that many years later, 'Girlfriend 2' can be used as a film studied by film schools." Because it's a very special case, it's a female comedy made by a Hong Kong female director, and no one has ever made it. Where is the acceptance now? I still think it's a very interesting topic, even though I've disappointed everyone. ”