On March 25, 1995, Shunji Iwai's feature film debut ,Love Letters was released in Japan.
On May 20 this year, mainland audiences welcomed the re-screening of this classic of Japanese pure love.
The main actors Kashiwara Takashi (18 years old) and Miki Sakai (17 years old), who were still green teenagers at that time, left their best years in the film and became the "white moonlight" in the hearts of many audiences.
One person played two roles of Miho Nakayama, who reached the peak of her acting career with "Love Letters".
A classic shot of Hiroko
After the film was released, it caused a sensation in Japan and even throughout Southeast Asia, and a wave of fresh romance films was blown.
It was introduced in 1999 Chinese mainland, and this time it was re-screened in the mainland after 22 years.
The main filming location of the film, the small town of Otaru in Hokkaido, Japan, because the film attracted many tourists, and some people even punched in one by one according to the classic pictures in "Love Letters".
Snowy otaru
The two elements of campus life and the theme of crush alone are enough to make people sigh for a long time.
The ambiguous feelings of adolescence, the sweet and sour interaction between the young girls of the same name, and the unspoken confession are all memorable for a lifetime.
Miki Sakai Kashiwabara Takashi
The story of "Love Letter" is full of a kind of "can't say, can't put down" emotion.
While sorting through the relics of her deceased fiancé Fujii, Hiroko Watanabe accidentally discovers his middle school souvenir book.
The ghost sent Hiroko to the address at the time, but unexpectedly received a reply from Fujii Tree.
Hiroko and her current boyfriend Shigeru Akiba go to Otaru to find out what is going on, and at the same time find the girl Fujii Tree who replied to the letter, and her fiancé is a junior high school classmate with the same name and surname, and there is also a touching past between the two teenagers.
It was not until the end of the story, when the "love letter" of "represented by painting" surfaced, that the mystery of the male Fujii tree's crush on the female Fujii tree was revealed.
At the end of the film, the portrait behind the borrowing card reveals the secret for the female Fujii tree
After 26 years, it is still a well-deserved "Japanese pure love compulsory" classic movie.
Most of the audiences who watched the movie at that time had become fathers and mothers, and their youth was gone, but the beauty recorded in the movie was timeless.
Today, Time Jun wants to use 5 emotional keywords and 10 behind-the-scenes easter eggs to take you to relive this "Love Letter".
Nostalgic retro
An important prop in "Love Letters" is letters, but the matter of "writing letters" is quite rare in today's society.
I still remember the red mailbox in front of the door of the female Fujii tree, which is an unforgettable bright color of the film.
The bicycles, libraries, and small town street scenes that appear frequently in the movie also have a soothing, somber retro atmosphere, which is in stark contrast to our fast-paced lifestyle today.
The heroine writes a letter to read the letter
In addition, the Polaroid SX-70 ALPHA1 sent by Hiroko to the female Fujii tree also appeared in the film received great attention, and the Nikon f4 in the hands of the young girl Fujii tree at the Games was rarely asked.
In fact, both cameras are film machines, and alpha1 instant spit is even faster.
But the f4's black metallic exterior looks too much like a digital camera, the ALPHA1 is an antique folding machine for leather coats, and what we call nostalgia often happens to old and beautiful things.
Dreamlike
Shunji Iwai is clearly a master of playing "surreal": the beautiful teenager who appears and disappears next to the white curtain in the library has made countless viewers remember for more than 20 years.
Fujii tree next to the white curtain in the library
The kind of adolescence, indescribable, real and illusory, seemingly existent, is accurately restored by this scene.
The same white curtains of the library, in the hazy backlight, reflect the beautiful posture of the girl, showing spotless purity.
The affection between the teenager and the girl, like this pure white curtain, fluttered with the wind in the memory.
This dreamlike charm is also reflected in the "two flowers" like Hiroko and the female Fujii tree, meeting and missing on the street.
The female Fujii tree heard her name and looked back, while Hiroko was drowned in the crowd, and at the moment when the two were about to recognize each other, they once again passed by.
The moment when the two "glance at ten thousand years" on the snowy street makes people feel the surging emotions in the character's heart. Speaking about the idea of these two scenes, Shunji Iwai admitted that it was influenced by Haruki Murakami.
These two shots with "surreal colors" have also become eternal classics in the hearts of the audience.
Want to talk back
In "Love Letters", Shunji Iwai accurately captures the adolescent mood of an adolescent who wants to talk and is indescribable.
For example, the teenager Fujii tree has a crush on the young girl Fujii tree, and the way this love is expressed is to attract attention with various pranks.
For example, he put a paper bag on his head and suddenly draped it over the head of the girl he had a crush on.
Stupid, I like you!
Adolescent teenagers attract the attention of girls through "bullying" pranks, which is very common in real life, and many viewers also resonate with this plot. The shyness and subtlety that belongs only to teenagers is extremely poetic.
The film spends a lot of ink and ink to depict scenes that belong to the campus era.
Remember the class roll call, from the first day of school, the two Fujii trees responded at the same time when the four eyes were facing each other, which was destined to open this fateful fate.
The classmates coaxed, and the names of the two were marked with love and written on the blackboard. They went to the library together for the day and sat together in good faith.
Whether it is the "chance encounter" made in the school carport after school, or the sketch portrait hidden behind the library card for many years, the unspoken love is poetic and beautiful.
And once this love is broken, it is easy to burst like a beautiful soap bubble, just like the girl who cried after confessing to being rejected in the film.
The "Fujii Tree" written on the reading card of the teenager is not a kind of "please call you by my name".
People who love deep enough will understand that just writing down your name, doing nothing, just staring at those three words is enough to be dazzling.
The love of the young Fujii tree is a prose poem unique to orientals, which is vague and hazy intertwined with youthful love.
Cold and warm are intertwined
The main filming location of the whole film of "Love Letters" is Otaru, who has been snowing, and the cool colors of the snow are impressive.
But there are also some rare warm-colored scenes in the film, which are in stark contrast.
Most of the warm-toned scenes are related to Hiroko's current boyfriend, Shigeru Akiba, a glass craft designer.
The icy snow of Otaru and the exuberant fire of "burning glass" in the house resemble the gentle and slow-swallowing male Fujii tree and the active Akiha Shigeru.
The two of them represent a cold lost love and a fiery love of reality.
And Hiroko only wears bright and red clothes when she is with Akiba Shigeru.
When it comes to cool-toned shots in the snow, the most classic is the beginning of the film, where Hiroko lies in the snow, holding her breath with her eyes closed, almost motionless.
After a few seconds, she took a deep breath, then slowly got up, raised her face desperately to feel the cold feeling of the snow falling.
Hiroko left behind a very classic side-facing pose, which is the picture on the poster of the film.
She wanted to use her body to measure every inch of the land in her fiancé's male Fujii tree's hometown, and she even wanted to hold her breath, as if she could truly appreciate the weight of death.
She melted this thick affection and longing into the snow.
At the end, Hiroko's shouts in the snow are even more moving, no matter how deep the thoughts are, how strong the love is, all that can be said is the sentence over and over again, "How are you?" I am fine. ”
This can be a memory, but it was already confused at the time.
Life and death are separated
"Love Letters" has a lot of images related to "death" throughout the film.
The film begins with Hiroko attending the death of the male Fujii tree, who has been dead for three years due to an accident.
Prior to this, the head of the "male tree" in the graduation commemorative book appeared alone, as if it were unlucky.
After the transfer, the "male tree" was placed on the table by his classmates, which is also a common japanese custom to pay tribute to the deceased.
Fujii's father died of pneumonia, and she herself had been catching a cold and coughing from beginning to end.
In the hospital, the "female tree" seems to see the rescued father in the dream, she also experienced the rescue of the life hanging in the balance, fortunately, under the desperate help of her grandfather and mother, the crisis turned into safety.
After her father's funeral, the "female tree" saw a frozen butterfly specimen, very well preserved, and its wings were crystal clear.
Life is like this butterfly, because it is fragile and perishable, it is even more precious.
Here we have to mention the Japanese aesthetic of "material mourning".
Because of Japan's geopolitical disasters and poor resources, it gives them an innate sense of uncertainty and the feeling that everything is about to say goodbye.
It is a sense of beauty that tosses between warmth and sorrow, between calm and farewell.
In "Love Letters", this beauty is vividly reflected.
10 little Easter eggs about Love Letters
1. "I pretended to be calm while trying to carry the card in my pocket. However, by coincidence, I like the apron, there is no pocket up and down. ”
This is the most poignant ending shot of "Love Letters".
The love letter from the male Fujii tree that has been late for many years has finally arrived at this moment, and the most beautiful love letter is your name and your portrait!
2. In the MV of Mitsura's song "Fairy Tale", the hero and heroine sit in front of the TV set to watch a Japanese movie.
In the TV, Miho Nakayama runs in the snow, and the heroine outside the picture is moved to tears.
This film is "Love Letters", and many people first know about this film through the MV of this song.
3. "Love Letter" is Shunji Iwai's first feature film released, and he feels that "Love Letter" is a work that "determines destiny", "with this film to achieve today's me".
4, director Shunji Iwai wrote on Weibo: "Love Letter" was filmed in October to early December, in fact, it was not the time to snow at all, but it really snowed when I wanted to snow, and I thought it was a miracle at the time.
But if I could foresee that this movie would be re-released in China after a quarter of a century, this kind of excess miracle would not have killed me.
The director also hand-wrote a Chinese letter greeting the Chinese audience.
5. Shunji Iwai once said that the creation of "Love Letters" was deeply influenced by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Forest".
But Haruki Murakami refused to adapt the book into a movie, so the director had to curve to save the country.
In terms of character settings, the two works actually have many overlaps, but due to the exchange of gender and the reorganization of character relationships, it is difficult for the general audience to find the connection between the two at once.
6. Most of the scenes in "Love Letters" were filmed on hokkaido island in the Otaru region.
The only exception is at the end of the film, where Hiroko Watanabe shouts at the mountains.
The mountain she is facing is called "Red Mountain" or "Red Peak", and this volcano is located 120 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, which is the highest of the Yaksugatake Mountains.
7. In the flashback passage at the end of the film, Fujii recalls that in the scene of her father's funeral, the background music is "A Winter Story", which begins with a piano solo.
This piano piece was played by Yuki Makino, who is only 8 years old.
8. In 2018, Shunji Iwai's film "Hello, Zhihua" filmed in the mainland was released.
The film is starred by Zhou Xun, Qin Hao and Zhang Zifeng, and the whole film is based on letters as the main line, and the plot is quite similar to "Love Letters".
9. On the back of the test paper of the female tree, the male Fujii tree drew a sketch of a swimsuit girl, which is an advertisement made by Japanese actress Miyazaki for the MINOLTA camera X-7.
It is said that these sketches in the film were painted by Shunji Iwai himself.
10. Before his death, the male Fujii tree sang Matsuda Seiko's song "Green Coral Reef", but Akiba said that Fujii did not like Matsuda.
This kind of "awkwardness" is like he obviously likes the female Fujii tree, but he still refuses to admit it.
Matsuda was Fujii's most iconic idol at Junior High School, and the ad for Miyazaki mentioned above, and the song "Green Coral Reef" were all the rage among Japanese middle school students in the 1980s.
The lyrics also have a moral, "My love is spreading, and it has gone away with the south wind, and it has reached the coral reef where the smoke blows."
Before the death of the male Fujii tree, he may still be thinking about the female Fujii tree and remembering his youth.