Published on December 27, 2021| No. 2734
About the impression of Shanghai, we have to start from a city propaganda film: a modern girl, dressed in a fashionable long skirt, shuttled through the Ten Mile Ocean Field, where the lights were dimmed, chose a small stall at the entrance of the alley to sit down, and ate small dumplings. This is the same as the scene of Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) wearing a cheongsam and buying small wontons in the movie "Fancy Years" directed by Wong Kar-wai, which together shows the tone of Shanghai.
At present, the word "tone" is mostly a positive meaning, referring to a person's demeanor, style, and mood. But before that, "Nong's tone is old enough" is a sarcastic and ridiculous sentence, which is used to describe people you are not used to. Combined with the scene of wearing Chinese clothes and eating snacks, the complexity and multi-faceted nature of the tone can be seen.
It can refer to both the elegance of man and the city spirit of the residents; it is both a praise for the modern city and a mockery of the man who is contrived and angry. This complexity of the tone is better presented by the Shanghainese comedy film "Long Live Love".
Produced by Xu Zheng, with post-90s newcomer Shao Yihui as the director and screenwriter, and starring Xu Zheng, Ma Yili, Wu Yue, Ni Hongjie, Zhou Yemang, Huang Minghao, Ning Li, etc., the film has landed in domestic theaters on December 24, and the Douban score hovers between 8.1 and 8.3 points.
The film tells the story between Shanghai's uncle Lao Bai (played by Xu Zheng) and three women with very different personalities and different experiences: miss Li (played by Ma Yili), the rich woman Gloria (played by Ni Hongjie) whose husband is missing, and the ex-wife Bei Bei (played by Wu Yue). It is not so much a "love myth" as it is a "love story".
Why does a movie that most of the time soars in Shanghainese get such a high rating from the audience? This may be related to the tone conveyed by this film.
Elegance coexists with the city of Haipai life
The reinforced concrete urban forest is our first impression of Shanghai. The metallic texture of an international metropolis is only one aspect of Shanghai. In addition to Xujiahui Commercial Center, People's Square Subway Station, and Pudong New Area across the Bund, the long road dotted with plane trees and the residential vegetable market spliced together by lane stalls are also the most eye-catching cultural landscapes in Shanghai.
The roads in Shanghai are very narrow, but they can hold the flavor of life. The school bus is parked here, the roadside coffee shop, milk tea shop can be used for rest, and the friend Lao Wu (Zhou Ye Mang) rides to the side of the plane tree, and then takes half an hour to drink a cup of coffee with Lao Bai and talk about his encounter with the big star Sophia Roland, which is the comfort of the small citizens.
Even when it comes to small things like chai rice oil and salt, Shanghainese can put a romantic glow on them. At the beginning of the film, the old white petty bourgeois mood is overflowing with words, but this is not a pretense, but closer to life.
Lao Bai, who calls himself a miscellaneous family, teaches people to draw on weekdays, which is the "far" of life; early in the morning, he rides his bicycle to the grocery store to buy daily necessities, and also shares the kitchen tricks (braised pork plus beer) with the neighbors, which is the "near" of life. In this far and near, the elegance of Shanghai citizens jumped to the screen.
The most prominent place in the film is the fireworks in the city, which comes from the passionate interpretation of two old Shanghai actors - the old white mother played by Zhang Zhihua and the mother of Miss Li played by Wu Mian.
The old aunt of Shanghai appeared and brought her own topic. The most common discussion is still the issue of house, residence, marriage and love relationship.
The white mother saw Miss Li coming out of her son's old white house and carrying a "drag oil bottle" girl, so she asked Lao Bai to quickly transfer the house to her grandson Bai Pigeon (Huang Minghao). Lao Bai is a divorced person, the object of the photo is a divorced, if the dove occupies the magpie's nest, the house is given to people with foreign surnames, then it is really "a dead crab".
Mother Li appeared in the old mansion of the Li family. In the corridor, she scolded and grinned, comparing her daughter Miss Li with other people's girlfriends: the daughter of the family bought a house for her mother in Pudong, her daughter divorced, and brought her granddaughter to squeeze with her in this dirty and broken building.
In addition, diet is also the most concerned point of the two elderly people. The white mother brought food to her son's house in a small box, and Mother Li chattered because her daughter had lost the overnight dishes that were placed in the refrigerator. These details are all images capturing the real life of small citizens in Shanghai.
If the tone of Shanghai's low-level residents is composed of the elegance of life and the city gas in chai rice oil and salt, then the tone of the "magic capital" of Shanghai is composed of ordinary people's homes and a large city with brilliant colors. In stark contrast to the old shanghai mansion in yellow-green tones is the KTV box with sound and color dogs and horses.
As a result, the focus on the tone of life has become a discussion about the love tone of men and women.
A love affair that places equal emphasis on mistakes and casualness
The tone in the eyes of the old Shanghainese fits this context: when a boy speaks pretentiously, snorts, or behaves like a girl, or a girl behaves like a boy, then such a person can also be mocked by the word "tone".
The white pigeon draws eyebrows all day long, and has more knowledge of cosmetics and skin care than girls, for which Lao Bai accuses his son of being like a "girly". At the same time, Lao Wu is also unaccustomed to the neutral style of Bai Pigeon's girlfriend Yang Yang (Wang Yinglu), calling it "neither male nor female". The contrast and inversion of the personality characteristics of men and women correspond to the dislocation of the emotional concepts and perspectives of men and women in the film.
The protagonist of "Love Myth" is male, but Lao Bai is pinched to death by three female characters.
Miss Li, who is engaged in the advertising industry, is a strong woman, independent, exquisite and rational is synonymous with her. As a modern girl with a white heart, Miss Li's attitude towards feelings is more calm. Miss Li's brand-name shoes Jimmy Choo was lost by Lao Bai, and in order not to let Lao Bai owe anything, she lied that the genuine version was Taobao goods. why?
On the one hand, Miss Li wants to take care of Lao Bai's face, and she wants to make up for the loss of her heart, but this shoe is "not worth" the price; on the other hand, the behavior of returning shoes is similar to the prince putting on crystal shoes for Cinderella, which belongs to the category of love, Miss Li has considered it again and again, or feels inappropriate, after all, both sides have families to raise, and not taking shoes is also a rejection of Lao Bai's confessional behavior.
In this relationship, the woman responds with a calm mind to the man who is indulging in the sea of fantasy. On the rooftop, Miss Li told Lao Bai: "When I was younger, I ate this set the most." The implication is that people who have entered middle age can only sigh "the demise of romanticism".
Gloria is like a "queen of the sea", claiming that her husband has been kidnapped and wandering around different men. "There is idle money, husband is missing, don't be too spiritual" is her life motto. This also became the basis for her to play ambiguous with Lao Bai.
At the dinner table, Gloria is ridiculed as a wild cat, looking for leftovers (old white, divorced men) to eat. In this regard, Gloria laughed and gave Lao Bai a sum of money after a one-night stand with Lao Bai, giving Lao Bai a sum of money on the grounds of buying old white paintings. "Prostitutes" take the initiative to buy the bill, not to mention, but also from male to female, this operation shows gloria's style and uninhibited.
Calling herself "all the business schools", she has achieved wealth freedom with her business acumen, and alludes to her playing with men in the palm of her hand. "Ten thousand grasses, leaves do not stick", only talk about stimulation and not rigid relationship, Gloria is the real world sober.
The third female Bei Bei is not surprisingly deadly, a sentence "I just made a mistake that all men in the world will make", with a male mind to accuse men's small belly chicken intestines: because of an extramarital affair, Lao Bai divorced Bei Bei. Bei Bei complained about this, but she did not stick to the past love, but enriched her life by dancing tango.
In contrast, Lao Bai is much more lukewarm, hesitant to do things, not decisive, not crisp. Instead, men have become mothers-in-law.
At the dinner table, the three women also ridiculed the female roles in the current domestic film and television dramas, either fox spirits or housewives, and there is only one ending for a good woman, marrying a good man. This paragraph ends with Lao Bai apologizing for them on behalf of the Chinese male screenwriter (the subtitle shows the director).
At the same time, "Love Myth" also expresses the theme of "unbearable lightness of love".
The love in the eyes of the older generation is love at first sight, destiny, sea oath, unswerving to death... One sentence to sum up: In the vast sea of people, just look at you, they will stay together for a lifetime. The ephemerality of the encounter and the eternity of love merge together, but the love in the film is like a floating cloud.
The story of the film is somewhat trivial, and the ending does not fall on the genre film's "final family" and "parting ways", but gives an open-ended ending: several people watch Fellini's old film "Love Myth" while complaining about the sleepy and unclear plot. Interestingly, some viewers also feel the same way about the "Love Myth" directed by Shao Yihui.
Director and screenwriter Shao Yihui
The "red breeze" and "night run" that appear in the film refer to the folklore "red breeze night run". The story tells that Li Jing and the Sui Dynasty Sikong Yang Sujia trick Hongfu privately decided to live forever, and met a squirrel on the road. The bearded guest is interested in Hongfu, but after learning about Li Jing and Hongfu's relationship, the three of them worship their brothers and sisters. The sense of siblingry and wandering between love is also reflected in the movie "Love Myth".
The light and fluttering plot and the casual emotional relationship constitute the tone of this Shanghai love story: in the current emotional relationship, no one is who is who, cherish it together, and give up when not together.
Fabricated with real private memories
Someone summed up the story of Wang Xiaobo's novel "Red Breeze Night Run" in this way: Li Jing and Hongfu fled from Luoyang City, and Wang Er testified to Fermat's theorem. But in Wang Xiaobo's eyes, escape and verification are not the focus, the focus is on the expectations of escape and verification. After escaping successfully, Li Jing became a great general, and Wang Er also entered the system, but they became boring people.
Man lives for the process, not for the end. The former is alive and flexible, and the latter is a pool of stagnant water. This view coincides with the old Wu in "Love Myth".
Old U live in the dreams of the past. Lao Wu is a self-proclaimed film fan, claiming to have been to the film capital of Rome, and also met the Italian actress Sophia Roland. At first, Lao Bai also felt that this was fake, and it wasn't until after Lao Wu's death that he discovered that it might be true. Whether it is true or not is not the point we want to discuss, what we want to analyze is the moment of Lao Wu's death.
After learning the news that Sophia Roland was dying, Lao Wu drove the crane west overnight. Ironically, the next day Sophia Roland was safe and sound, and the star's "fake death" was exchanged for Lao Wu's "real death".
Lao Wu has been childless and childless all his life, but he talks to Lao Bai all day about his former sexual encounters. He is a man of mythological fantasies, who needs to be coaxed into living, and once the myths die and expectations are shattered (Sophia Roland's "death"), lao wu's spiritual pillar collapses completely.
Lao Wu's expectations for fantasy and the tossing and turning in Lao Bai's reality constitute the tone of people's spiritual world: true and false is the background of life; if it is only true or only false, it is either too boring or too suspended.
Just like the audience was moved after watching "Love Myth": some people were moved by their true emotional expressions, and some people wept for the seemingly false memories of Lao Wu.
For this city, Lao Wu also has no memory. When he stopped his bicycle and drank a cup of coffee, the Henan security guards were not allowed, and they also drove him to run away in old Shanghai with a crappy "pidgin". Shanghai, which speaks the southern dialect to the north, the local residents who are ostracized by the foreigners, and the local young people who do not speak Much Shanghainese (Bai Pigeon's lines are mainly Mandarin, mixed with Shanghai dialects), make Shanghai a "magic capital" where the old Wu cannot inhabit.
Although the plot of "Love Myth" is somewhat messy, it is difficult for the audience to have a foothold, but this film is still a rare film. In particular, the emotional table of middle-aged people in the city and the presentation of Haipai images are particularly valuable.
【Text/He Thought】