Published on December 12, 2021| No. 2716
Every year until December, it is the key rehearsal period for the finale dramas of major platforms and the New Year's Eve dramas. Last night, "Xiao MinJia" was broadcast simultaneously on Hunan Satellite TV and Youku Video, adding firewood to the competition for the big drama that was in full swing at the end of the year.
As one of the most anticipated works in this year's drama market, "Little Minjia" has many elements that can mobilize the audience's desire to watch and participate.
For example, Zhou Xun and Huang Lei's holding hands again on the small screen is both "memory killing" and arousing reverie. For another example, director Wang Jun reunited with the "Small" character series after "Little Parting" and "Little Joy", which can be regarded as the ballast stone of the production level. In addition, by Huang Lei as the chief screenwriter, he can always bring the texture of life and worldly appeal to the work, which also makes people suspense...
But more importantly, in the matrix of domestic urban drama works, "Xiao Min Jia" is a unique enough one. It has a unique realistic perspective, focusing on the middle-aged people in the city who are turbulent but born in the sun. It also has its own character modeling method, which pulls women's growth from the workplace game back to the family bondage, and there is more empathetic pull and warmth.
I am willing to see "Xiao Min Jia" as a joint sequel to the "small" character series of Lemon Meng Pictures and "Twenty Not Confused" and "Thirty Only". It is still digging the growth secrets of urban people, but in addition to the parental love story, it also shows the self outside the parenthood of middle-aged people. It was still focusing on female emotions and survival, only this time there were not only twenty or thirty, but also forty or even sixty.
The migration of Xiao Min's family
If you want to accurately position "Xiao Minjia", you must consider it in the vertical and horizontal coordinates of the development of urban drama.
Strictly speaking, urban drama is a very Chinese theme classification. In the creative system of Anglo-American, Japanese and Korean dramas, there is no genre expression that is fully adapted to it. It is a genre branch that has grown up in the wave of urbanization in China, and originally referred to a type of drama that is opposed to rural drama and shows the modern and modern new way of life in the city.
Therefore, for a long time, fashion sense and romantic expression have occupied the main road of urban drama. As adventurers in the pursuit of a new way of life, young people often become the protagonists of urban dramas with the image of footless birds and rootless trees.
Today, China's urbanization wave has been rapidly advancing for decades, and a large number of "new citizens" have taken root in the metropolis. When they become the protagonists of urban dramas, they cannot ignore the social and family structural changes precipitated by this group of people. This is also the deep-seated reason why urban dramas have excavated the theme of the original family in recent years.
"Xiao Min Jia" drama as its name suggests, its uniqueness is to portray the growth of women in the bondage of the family. Moreover, this original family is also very special, chasing the heroine Liu Xiaomin (Zhou Xun), who migrated from Jiujiang to Beijing.
Like many women who choose to venture into the metropolis, Liu Xiaomin chose to come to Beijing more or less with the meaning of "escaping" from her hometown more or less.
In the first two episodes, "Xiao Min's Family" uses condensed flashback shots and a small number of lines to explain the reason why Liu Xiaomin left Jiujiang. When she was young, she obeyed her mother's door-to-door marriage arrangement and married her alcoholic ex-husband Jin Bo (Tu Yansong).
In the unhappy married life, she was constantly consumed. In the end, because of a "spurious" cheating incident, he lost his reputation and lost his confidence in his family. She came to Beijing to start her life again, becoming a wonderful midwife in a well-known hospital, but she was single until she was forty years old.
No one can be a legless bird and a rootless tree for a lifetime, and the bondage of the family always grows secretly, and the shear is still chaotic.
For Liu Xiaomin, her boyfriend Chen Zhuo (Huang Lei), who has been together for a year, although in tune, always has a diaphragm that cannot be said. This diaphragm is the imprint of Jiujiang — Chen Zhuo is the ex-husband of high school classmate Li Ping (Qin Hailu), and Li Ping played a key role in her life's tainted incident.
If Liu Xiaomin, Li Ping's relationship, can still be selectively avoided in life, with the sudden visit of her mother Wang Sumin (Played by Liu Lili) and son Jin Jiajun (Played by Zhou Yiran), the distance between her carefully maintained and the past is completely broken.
The unexpected reunion, of course, brought her a long-lost warmth. But why did my son choose to suddenly go to Beijing to prepare for the exam? What storm will Jin Bo, the ex-husband Jin Bo set off without thinking about it? What is her mother's attitude towards her choice of marriage and love? Liu Xiaomin, who has been single for more than ten years, has ushered in a turning point in his life again in middle age, and the following scenes make people look forward to it.
The arc of urban women
"Little MinJia" is an urban family drama and a drama that focuses on women's emotions. But if we look closely, we can also concatenate a group of female growth group portraits of all ages.
The whole drama unfolds from the perspective of Xiao Min, and the identity establishment, family relationship and social survival status of 40+ women are naturally the main lines of expression of "Xiao Min's Family".
Liu Xiaomin, who is in the second turn of his life, breaks the audience's stereotype of middle-aged urban women. She is a professional woman with a career, but she is not a workaholic who places all the value of her life on work. She is a single mother, but she is not a parent who is bound in the name of love. She has indeed been divorced for many years, but she has not lost the ability to love because of this cold, old-fashioned, and old-fashioned.
Even at the age of 40, you can still be in the process of dynamic growth, you can still reposition family relationships and intimate relationships, which is the urban person with healthy personality development in reality.
In the play, also facing a major turning point in life, there is Liu Xiaomin's 30+ sister Liu Xiaojie (played by Tang Yixin).
She chose to "slip away" at the age when she should have stood, said goodbye to her immature "Ma Bao" husband, and began to think again about what kind of life she wanted. Her crispness and decisiveness are the ideal state of the modern urban woman. Her love affair with the "second generation of the rich" Xu Zheng (Fan Shizheng) is hidden in the challenge to the door-to-door view of marriage, presumably there will be many subsequent ups and downs.
In Xiao Min and Xiao Jie's mother Wang Sumin, "Xiao Min Family" also buried a dark line of growth of 60+ women. Yes, even at retirement age, people face conflicts of personality growth. At this stage, it is necessary to complete the task of self-integration, from which to find a sense of order and meaning, so that you can have a happy old age.
But obviously, for Wang Sumin, who regards her daughter as the whole of her life, Xiaomin's new love affair with Chen Zhuo and Xiao Jie's sudden divorce are also major challenges in her life.
More importantly, because she accompanied her grandson to Beijing to prepare for the exam, she also left Jiujiang. While reuniting with her daughters, she also has to transform the thinking of a close-knit society and integrate into the rhythm of urban life. She has been divorced for most of her life, how to regain the sense of value and the meaning of life, this suspense also satisfies the audience's appetite.
In addition to Liu Xiaomin, the representative of the 40+ women in "Xiao Min's Family" also has a bold and spicy Li Ping, she is a bit of a gold worship but also straightforward and frank, she chooses to be an elderly mother to add a child to her husband, and the follow-up is likely to meet Xiao Min who is a midwife again.
Chen Zhuo's daughter Chen Jiajia (Xiang Hanzhi) is just 20 years old, and growing up in a divorced family, her concepts of money and family affection are still shaping. When she learns about Chen Zhuo and Xiao Min's love affair, she will surely set off a lot of waves and experience significant growth.
In the screenwriting technique, we call the curve of character growth arc. The premise of the establishment of a protagonist is that he must constantly encounter and cross the gap, in the process of interspersing growth and outlining the arc, whether you are young or middle-aged, old.
"Little Minjia" is obviously ambitious in terms of female expression. While focusing on the emotions of middle-aged women, it also outlines the personality dilemmas and growth momentums of women of all ages, and when the arc intersects into a spectrum, a shining urban women's growth map takes shape.
Looking up at middle-aged students
Finally, I would like to add that "Xiao Min Jia" is a rare urban drama that is friendly to middle-aged people. This refers not only to middle-aged women, but also to middle-aged men.
The friendliness we are talking about here is not beautification. There are many urban dramas that beautify middle-aged people, but under excessive filtering, middle-aged people have either become masked people with tones, or they have become greasy ghosts who only talk about feelings after success. This image is not only that young viewers look at the diaphragm, but also that middle-aged people feel resistant when they see it themselves.
The friendliness mentioned here is not the ultimate. Holding a magnifying glass to the chicken feathers of middle-aged students, there are also many urban dramas that blend dog blood in the ultimate expression. Of course, this will arouse some emotions and stimulate some sympathy, but I am afraid that it will also become the object of ridicule for young people's "daily marriage fear tips".
The friendliness we are talking about here is heads-up. It not only shows the exhaustion of middle-aged people in complex family relationships, but also does not forget to show the purity of their forties and can jump up on the road happily; both to shoot their calculations and plans for small ambitions, but also to shoot their frankness that they can completely ignore for the direction of their hearts.
In the opening two episodes of "Little Minjia", we can already feel the appeal brought by this kind of level-headed middle-aged life. The good play has just begun, and we continue to chase the play.
【Text/Tin Drum】