Devil Movie Review/The Vicissitudes of the Sea
Nowadays, some small-cost Hong Kong films have begun to have some taiwanese small fresh style.
These films are no longer like standard Hong Kong-style commercial films, full of violent scenes of "all overheated, all crazy", or the strange plot gimmicks of hunting for strange topics, but do not hurry to spread the story, let a few single-line characters go around in the story, hug the group to warm, and feel a mouthful of life.
This kind of film comes from Xu Anhua's many literary and art films, and the more representative one is "Lucky Is Me" in previous years, but this time, it is "Fallen Man" starring Huang Qiusheng.
The two films are actually very similar, both are a healthy young man who takes care of an elderly person with a physical disability. And they're all heterosexual combinations, and in Lucky Me, the old is female and the younger is male, and in Fallen Man, it's just the opposite. Using this combination of the opposite sex is undoubtedly to increase the diversity of emotions, and the sharp antagonism between the same sex will be resolved in the opposite sex.
However, the difference is that "The Fallen Man" is obviously more obscure than the story of "Lucky Me", and the focus is more focused. In this film, Chang Rong, played by Huang Qiusheng, divorced in middle age, took his eldest son alone, but unexpectedly encountered an accident on the eve of his son's college entrance examination, and all the parts below his shoulders were paralyzed. But when the story is presented, Chang Rong is already a lonely old man, his son was sent to his ex-wife, and he can only live a lonely life under the care of a Filipino maid.
The other protagonist is Evelyn, a Filipino maid who takes care of ChangRong, a girl who loves the art of photography, but due to her poor family and marital problems, she has to come to Hong Kong to work as a Filipino maid.
The love-hate relationship between Chang Rong and his family, Evelyn is far away in the Philippines is whether it is or not, all of which are shown in the film with information such as phone calls and videos. This fragmented, incomplete, and vague information, like slanted light and dust from the back of the characters, tells us that both Chang Rong and Evelyn are burdened by the chores of the family. So, they are silent at the beginning of the story, and it is difficult to have a sense of trust in each other.
This treatment is much more advanced than the usual deliberately sold healing tablets. ChangRong's loneliness in bed, Evelyn's absent-mindedness in cleaning, all have a thick but invisible bitterness, and once the bitterness is left blank, it can let the audience fill in with their own experiences and empathize with it.
This hazy bitterness is also used in the emotional connection between Chang Rong and Evelyn. The two didn't go right at first, and after several irresponsible nurses, Chang-young can't believe that Evelyn, a young female college student, will take care of her for a long time. However, after going through the run-in period, trust and dependence made the two have a delicate affection.
Evelyn allows Changrong to regain his reason and focus on life, and Evelyn shows Evelyn the good side of human nature. When the spiritual support across the age becomes a seemingly innocent love between men and women, we do not feel dreaded about it, because both of them have the most precious trust in each other, but this kind of love, except for being rudely accused by Chang Rong's sister, does not let the two respond to this feeling in the film. Instead, they are replaced by thoughtful eyes and pointed lines.
Until the end of the film, when Chang Rong silently produces a resume and portfolio for Evelyn and plans a better way out of life for her, we can't tell whether this is Chang Rong's male and female love or his pure goodwill.
Huang Qiusheng is very good at grasping this vague emotion, if the Filipino actress who plays Evelyn is still unfamiliar with this, her love and attachment to Changrong in the film is simply unobstructed. But when Huang Qiusheng deals with this emotion, he is just like a young boy hiding a huge secret, and he is like a dignified elder, and it is difficult for us to see if he really loves Evelyn.
Ambiguity makes Changrong, played by Huang Qiusheng, no longer a lonely old man with weak emotions, but a fallen person who hides thousands of secrets in his heart. He may have a crush on Evelyn, but subject to age and body, he had to make a series of painful decisions.
If "The Fallen Man" can handle the living conditions of Filipino maids in Hong Kong, or maintain this ambiguity in dealing with Evelyn's success process, I believe that the film can definitely become a masterpiece in Chinese films in 2019. Disappointingly, however, the film does not carry out the ambiguity throughout.
The situation of Filipino maids in Hong Kong is simply shown as a few Filipino maids nestling in the corners of the city, complaining when they are lost, and teaching each other the secrets of the industry; when they are proud, they blend into nightclubs and show the dignity of lower-class foreigners through colorful dresses. This kind of non-interactive display method does not allow filipino maids to interact with Hong Kong people, nor does it use images to make a sociological scan, relying only on a few pieces of dialogue, I want to show the class suffering of foreigners, which is too understated!
As for Evelyn's successful process, it is completely a standard answer to "counterattack success", we can't even see setbacks and ups and downs, except for a contradiction with Changrong because of the camera in the middle, as if Evelyn is completely a genius who was delayed by the work of the Filipino maid.
It was hard to extend her pain infinitely with ambiguity, but here it became insignificant. When the dream-chasing process becomes a "walk away" trip, the original heavy literary and artistic masterpieces will also be devalued into literary and artistic novels, and the two have essential differences.