"Predecessor 3" won nearly 2 billion at the box office, and the pre-sale of "Later Us" exceeded 100 million, probably "sheding your own tears in other people's stories" will soon become a popular new genre in the Chinese film market. It is probably not fair to put these two movies together, after all, the latter really has the mellowness and layers of "milk tea". The ignorance and recklessness of traditional youth films are all there, and there is a little more relief for people to look back at middle age.
Stills from "Later Us"
Director Rene Liu
Rene Liu, who is a director for the first time, gathers the best Chinese filmmakers in the team behind the scenes, photographing Li Pingbin, recording Du Duzhi, music Chen Jianqi, editing Liao Qingsong and Kong Jinlei, audiovisual language and techniques, enough to carry Liu Ruoying to play all her ideas. The surprise is that Rene Liu did not drown out the talent belonging to the director in the perfect and balanced presentation. Rhythm, detail and ideas, telling a story that is not innovative is the skill of Rene Liu.
In fact, Rene Liu's love story is not so moving, it is the most cheesy, handsome and beautiful women "once the golden wind and jade dew meet, they win countless in the world" love at first sight. After that, they accompany each other, tempt each other, confess to each other, change each other... Then it became what the other party wanted, but the other party also became what he didn't understand. Then walk and walk, and disperse. Then nostalgia, meeting, and finding that they could never go back.
The twists and turns in the middle do not seem to have any twists and turns, ordinary like the water and air in life, down-to-earth through the various almost necessary routines in love. The actor's state is good, a look, or a casual hurt, the sweetness of the spoiled, and the bitterness of the thought, are reconciled out of the aftertaste, after all, there seems to be nothing special.
Perhaps regret is the most resonant part of it. After all, I will remember you, and then love others, is the most important ending of love.
It may be that the middle-aged appearances of Zhou Dongyu and Jing Bairan (especially Zhou Dongyu) are really not convincing. Rene Liu uses black and white and color parts to distinguish the narrative of different time and space. Rene Liu gave a good reason, seeing qing's game said that if the boy can no longer find the girl, his world is black and white. So the black and white time that is usually used to reminisce about the past is brought to life, the reality has lost its color, that is, they have lost each other's world, and the black and white shadow tone is like an extension of commitment, and like a helpless sigh of a parallel world.
I also like Rene Liu's moderation. When most youth films reach the end of middle age, a sprinkled dog blood breath strength that is not as good as nostalgia interprets various styles of dog tailed mink. And "Later Us", as if standing in the position of a person to middle age, looking back at youth, throbbing and colliding again and again. It is particularly beautiful, and in regret, there is also relief. And every eye contact between middle-aged people, without seeing the electric light and flint, is a self-evident undercurrent. Every time you feel ambiguous in an atmosphere that reaches a certain concentration, the behavior of the hero and heroine is always, active or passive, abruptly stopped. That kind of foolishness is not the shyness or pride of youth, but the repression and restraint of self-examination. In the desire to say and stop again, to meet and refuse, the internal injury of nostalgia was actually calmed, allowing the audience and the actors to digest themselves together.
And more than love. Another side line, it seems, is the movie, where people are more heart-wrenching. Tian Zhuangzhuang has the charm of four or two thousand pounds, and it is inadvertently bland to raise his hands and feet, but in the blandness, he precipitates the most authentic color and fragrance of life.
What can't go back is not just love. At the end of the film, Jing Bairan said to Zhou Dongyu that no matter where we go, we are all foreigners. At this time, I suddenly remembered that shortly after the opening of the first New Year, Jing Bairan, who returned home from vacation, said to Tian Zhuangzhuang, "Without sticky bean bags, how can it be counted as the New Year?"
"Later Us" is adapted from Rene Liu's novel "New Year, Go Home", and the emotional state of the hero and heroine intercepts the New Year's fragment in each paragraph, but in the same scene repeated, people feel that things are not human.
There is a lamentable detail, which is the wine table of the small restaurant of Tian Zhuangzhuang's family. The first year was crowded with people, and everyone laughed and laughed as if we remembered that the New Year should be there. By the second year, the dinner table had lost the aunt who had earnestly advised Zhou Dongyu to be cautious about the object of the previous year, and several other middle-aged and elderly people were nagging "wife in Australia" and "daughter in Chongqing", and more and more people shouted their dreams to leave their hometowns, hollowed out rural areas, empty nest old people, is the pain point that this era of rapid development has no time to take care of.
Later they came home for the New Year. Masking the hard work of working in the city, pretending to give yourself a disguise that looks good. However, in the laughter behind the backs of others, they were seen through the truth. Rene Liu is truly understanding the sophistication of people, old classmates, while saying "pretending to be a big tail wolf" behind the back, singing is the enthusiasm of "friends walk together for a lifetime". You just want to say that this is the hypocrisy of feelings, and when it comes to paying the bill, a sincere sentence of "When you are mixed, please invite your classmates to have a meal" is also a real heart. This is the complex human feeling, the feelings are true, and the ridicule is also true. Not so proflied, so real as, all around us, something that happens at any time.
And then later. Young people don't go home for the New Year, and talk to the old people on the phone. Cover up their respective loneliness with pretend hilarity. Tian Zhuangzhuang's new year's small restaurant, from drinking to the old brothers, to sitting alone by the fire. It is not only the son who has left, but also the people of his generation. And more and more of what is on the mind, can no longer be said.
When the son finally mixed up with a personal appearance, he said that he bought a house and took his father to Beijing to live in a big house and live a good life. Tian Zhuangzhuang said, "That's your good day, not mine." Imagine how many elderly parents, physically broken, but unwilling to drag their children, saying "This is my family, I will not go, you love to go back", but do you remember that when graduation was imminent, the father who was not yet old had a bold command to say, "You graduate and I will come back." ”
Later, my father was gone. There is no reason to go back for the New Year. The son has a home in Beijing, the son himself has become a father, no one has steamed sticky bean buns for him, he is busy cooking the kitchen, and in the background sound is his wife's anxious complaints about going to school.
This is life, chai rice oil and salt days at a glance to see the head. Remember what you said to your father ten years ago? "How can it be counted as a New Year without a sticky bean bun?" But year after year, 10 years and 20 years, isn't that how it has passed?
Later, we will never eat the sticky bean bun made by my father at the New Year, and later we remember the taste of our hometown, but our hometown has become a place that cannot be returned.
Like Rene Liu's "Later" sung by Rene Liu twenty years ago, "Later Us" also tells a story of regret. This regret is not a yin and yang error, not a "if we could have been less stubborn then, we are not so sorry now" assumption.
In the movie, the reunion of the Qingqing asks a little,
"What if we hadn't broken up then?" "We'll break up later."
"What if we just don't care about it together?"
"Then we may already be divorced."
"If you can believe me and stay with me to the end?"
"Then you may not succeed."
The story has no if, everything is not accidental, and later we become us. Every step is a stepping stone paved with the road ahead.
Regret is a must, even if they are together, there will be regrets that belong together. So there is no need to cling to this shout, the beauty that has happened is worth remembering. No period is already perfect, why misunderstand the story is not finished.
Some say it's a movie that can't be seen with the current one. But what does it matter, there are so many regrets, it belongs to love, and it also belongs to life. Because you know the cost of losing, you should also cherish what you have in front of you. A letter from Tian Zhuangzhuang said, "Fate is a matter, it is good to live up to the other party, and it is really difficult to live up to this life." It's really hard, and it's going to be a disappointment. When we become the later us, we should also remember that there may be more of this failure than you think.