Netflix is making a big push into Asian markets, including Taiwan. Compared with the "Squid Game" that exploded some time ago, the gimmicky Taiwan drama "Hua Lantern Chu Shang" is more eye-catching, and the story focuses on the love and hate of Taiwan's drinking women.
The series is half of the well-known actors in Taiwan, with actresses Lin Xinru, Yang Jinhua, Liu Pinyan, Xie Xinying, Guo Xuefu, Xie Qiongyan, and actors Yang Youning, Feng Xiaoyue, Zheng Yuanchang, Xu Guanghan, Huo Jianhua, and Zhang Xuanrui.
It is reported that in order to complete the star lineup, Neflix, as the producer, spent NT$250 million and took 4 years to build. After watching this new drama of Netflix, you will sigh that the combination of contemporary women's theme creation and suspense drama can be described as natural.
The first episode of "The First Light" is suspenseful.
After a typhoon, several students went hiking together.
Young people are always off the beaten path. They drilled through the barbed wire with "no passage" signs and drilled deep into the forest. However, a hand covered in the dirt broke into their sight, a nameless female corpse that did not know how long it had been dead.
The police soon arrived, and the policeman who led the team recognized at a glance that the deceased was a man from the "Light" Hotel, whom they had only recently seen.
A case of throwing a corpse led to the love and murder of the women of the "light" hotel.
"Light" is not an ordinary hotel, it is the most typical entertainment place in the heyday of Linsen North Road, the customer group is mainly Japanese, the service method is close to the form of a female public relations club, does not provide physical trading, sells alcohol at the same time, sells limited-time ambiguity and companionship.
At the Light Hotel, there are two moms, Sang, three or five bartenders, and a bartender.
There are not many entertainment venues with red wine and greenery, several women have their own hearts, Lin Xinru's mother played by Rose, Yang Jinhua's mother Su, is a pair of good sisters who grew up together, experienced ups and downs together, and panned down the hotel together.
The two sisters are like a passionate red rose and one is like an elegant white rose. Although Rose's mother is a veteran of the love scene, she is still trapped in the gentle township of a handsome screenwriter, but she seems to have forgotten a very serious problem, the man who came to find the wine lady, will not be dedicated, and soon after his screenwriting career is on the right track, he has a new love, so he launched a cold violence against Rose's mother.
Finally, one day, Rose found the scumbag to confront, which realized the fact of abandonment, and she sadly sought the comfort of another mother, Sansu, unaware that her girlfriend had been silently fond of the scumbag. Now that Rose and the screenwriter have broken up, Sue's long-suppressed heart has begun to stir, and she is soon with the screenwriter. However, all this Rose soon knew.
On Rose's birthday, she accidentally saw the best sister and the most loved man kissing in the photo, but she quickly sorted out her mood and gave every lady in the store a pair of red high heels, and Sue also had it. Coincidentally, the female corpse buried in the mountain forest three months later was also wearing red high heels on her feet.
Whose red heels are these "light" hotels? Looking closely, every woman in the "Light" Hotel has her own secrets. "Hanako" is Rose's former cellmate, who once went to the sea in the early years, and now wants to live a peaceful life, but unexpectedly the embarrassing past comes to the door, and the prostitute forcibly insults and beats her on a rainy night, leaving Hanako on the road like a garbage. In the eyes of others, the bartender and the prostitute are the same.
"Lily" often celebrates, but accidentally falls into the trap of drug traffickers, she thinks she has met love, but she does not know that it is a tool for her boyfriend Henry to smuggle drugs. After the drugs she hid were found and confiscated by Su's mother, her boyfriend did not hesitate to take criminal measures in order to get the drugs back.
"Aji" is the oldest lady in the store. She is addicted to gambling, owes usury, and dreams of winning the lottery, and she is eager to have a string of digital numbers on the pillar. When she learned that the big customer in the store was going back to Japan, she used all her strength to seduce her to take her back with her, but unfortunately, the big customer liked Su.
"Aiko" is the only college student in the store, she likes her classmate He Yuen, who likes Su's mother but is abandoned by her, she retaliates against Su's mother for her dissatisfaction in her heart, and plunges herself into the whirlpool, so she has to leave her job and suspend her school.
In "The First Light", who died and who killed her? This is a puzzle that has been haunting the audience.
It has to be said that more and more female audiences have a preference for female emotional suspense dramas, which has been verified as early as the 1940s in the trend of women's film creation in Hollywood. At that time, a type of film represented by "Butterfly Dream" and "Under the Gas Lamp" used suspense to show women's doubts about male partners. In a similar image style to film noir, this kind of questionable heroine shows the subtlety of female psychology and also evokes the resonance of female audiences.
In the creation of European and American women's dramas in recent years, emotional suspense dramas that highlight women's consciousness and resistance are also in the mainstream. A number of female suspense dramas represented by "Doctor Foster", "Big Little Lies", "Deadly Woman", "Docks", and "Killing Eve" have attracted widespread attention in China, and have also had a greater impact on the artistic style of domestic women's suspense drama creation. Last year, "White Moonlight", which tells the story of the wife's response to the crisis of her husband's cheating, and "Skyscraper", which traces the truth of Zhong Meibao's murder in a "Rashomon" way, can be regarded as two of the more outstanding domestic female suspense dramas this year.
Directed by female director Liu Ziwei, "White Moonlight" performs the most classic theme of "crisis of trust" in the female suspense narrative. However, in order to pursue the reversal effect, "White Moonlight" lacks a transition from delicate and subtle to decisive killing, resulting in a strong sense of fracture in the heroine's personality logic, which affects the integrity of the work.
"Skyscraper" also draws lessons from the female narrative tradition, restoring the classic feminist question - who killed her? In the investigation of Meibao's death, through the repeated memories of her by the surrounding characters, not only outline her tragic growth trajectory, but also tell the essential dilemma of women in the workplace as bystanders in the corner. However, also out of a fascination with reversal techniques, "Skyscraper" intensively outputs topics in the last two episodes, completely subverting the narrative of the previous 14 episodes. Although this dazzling narrative stimulates the eye, it dissolves the feminist expression of the entire work. After reversal, the source of all tragedies is borne by the stepfather who combines all evil, and the female characters are all allied, watching and helping each other, and to a certain extent, they cannot speak for women more politely.
Looking back, every woman in the "First Lights" store may be a victim or a murderer, and as the plot progresses, the stories, dilemmas and entanglements behind the women of the Light Hotel are gradually revealed to the audience.
In the "light" hotel, this group of women actually have one thing in common mentally, they are in a happy scene, ostensibly a "look of not believing in love for a long time", but they end up trapped by love one by one. Lily has to work two jobs in order to raise her boyfriend, Sue even has a grudge with all the women in the Hikari Hotel because of love, she doesn't like the college student He Yu'en, but still accepts her, so she has a vendetta against Aiko; she doesn't like Nakamura, but she snatches him from Aji's hands, and even wants to marry him and live in Japan; because she wants to be with the screenwriter who has been in love for a long time, she almost turns her face with her best sister Rose. But at the end of the day, what she's been looking for is a sense of belonging.
On the surface, they are bright and beautiful, but in fact they have been wandering. The attention paid to the plight of women's survival in the play is not only women in special industries, but also involves understanding and respect, which undoubtedly raises the height. Indeed, at present, there are more and more domestic women's theme dramas, they are without exception, all playing the feminist gimmick to please female audiences, but there is no real concern for women's situation and delicate emotions, "The First Lantern" has opened up a new path for domestic female suspense dramas, and won back the home.