"Love Myth" made me see the future of Chinese cinema.
The debut of a post-90s female director, telling the love story of middle-aged people, all Shanghainese dialogue: every label sounds like a commercial minefield.
But it is such a film that lacks "blockbuster" elements that has become the best commercial film of the year for many fans.
"Love Myth" is romantic but not suspended, and emits a human touch and fireworks from beginning to end. Fans generously gave 8.3 points, better than 91% of romance films.
For the first time, the love of middle-aged people is more real than that of young people.
The most difficult thing is that in "Love Myth", mainland directors bid farewell to the fearless and heroic characters in the mythological era, and returned their vision to the ordinary people of the contemporary era who are exceptionally vivid. Let's successfully reflect from the movie screen to ourselves or others in real life.
Women stare at men
Since "33 Days of Lost Love", chick movies have become a new entry point for women's identity in mainland theaters. Love values are packaged in chick movies as independent petty bourgeois figures that look beautiful but fragile; impulsive, but can be forgiven.
After all, impulsiveness and love at first sight are the exclusive labels of young people. But for middle-aged people, everything seems luxurious and complicated.
"Love Myth" gives "33 Days of Lost Love" an extension of its values. From youth to middle age, women's attitudes towards love have finally become more free, open and inclusive.
Moreover, in the struggle for love, women completely occupy the "upper hand", and even once regarded men as the object of gaze, contrary to the passive status of women attached to men in previous mainland romance films, or the symbolic image of being gazed at by men.
The protagonist of the film is a divorced middle-aged man Lao Bai (Xu Zheng), as a Shanghai Turk, he does not have much life pressure, and his pursuit of money and fame is relatively indifferent.
He lived in a small two-story western-style building that was ancestral, and made a living by teaching people to draw, indifferent to fame and fortune, and enjoying himself.
But the sudden appearance of Miss Li (Ma Yili) makes him reawaken his desire for love. As a result, Lao Bai is involved in an emotional entanglement of "three women and one man": his ex-wife Bei Bei (played by Wu Yue) and the rich woman Gloria (played by Ni Hongjie) take turns to enter, stirring up waves in his ordinary life.
On the surface, this is the dog blood story of "three women fighting for one man", but as the story progresses, it is found that this is clearly "three women and one play", and men are only worthy of being spectators.
In "Love Myth", the male protagonist Lao Bai is more like a tour guide, leading the audience to wander the streets of Shanghai, in order to look at the women, not with a gaze, but with an envious posture.
To exaggerate, he is the prey in the eyes of the three women. But it is not necessary to get to prove their charm, and the dispensability of men is the most independent and complete self-identity of the three women.
Miss Lee is a single mother who lives with Maya, a mixed-race daughter born to her British ex-husband. She is dependent and grateful to Lao Bai, but she is always separated by a layer and cannot fully accept his affection. After failing, it seems much more cautious.
Gloria was one of Old White's students. Separated from her husband for a long time, "rich and idle, husband missing, cutting too spirit (too good) Oh." Middle-aged rich woman, a master of the love field, pretending to play the game of the human world, in fact, longing for true love.
Although her ex-wife Bei Bei has been divorced from Lao Bai for many years, she has always had contacts and has a habitual possessive control over Lao Bai.
The young female director Shao Yihui deliberately created a kind of "gender perversion" and placed women in the main position in order to trigger the audience's empathetic thinking.
At the beginning of the film, Miss Li and Lao Bai secretly left after a night of affair, and then ignored Lao Bai's love; for example, Gloria and Lao Bai once gave Lao Bai a sum of money the next day, and also ridiculed him: "It turns out that you are so cheap!" Bei Bei said even more bluntly: "Although I love to play, I always put home first." I just made a mistake that all men make. ”
When you meet such a woman, it is the man who has no rut. The three female characters in the film live freely and confidently, which is different from the female image of ordinary domestic films.
I have to say that this is a very clever way to shoot. Because the essence of humor lies in dislocation.
When the director replaces a series of "scumbag" behaviors with the weaker female side of the power relationship and lets a man bear it, not only does the meaning of moral criticism disappear, but also creates a sense of misplaced ridicule. And through this sense of ridicule, the film actually completes a more brisk female expression, not revenge, nor full of anger and resentment, but from self-deprecation, through empathy, and finally completed the irony.
For example, there is a scene in the film, which is still unfinished.
Miss Li, her ex-wife Bei Bei, Gloria, and Lao Bai's friend Lao Wu, by chance, gathered at Lao Bai's house.
Everyone carries their own thoughts, the words are hidden and mysterious, and they do not say broken, making this Shanghainese dialogue interesting.
Old White Ex-Wife: Leftovers are also grabbed by wildcats.
Miss Li: I don't like to rush to eat with others.
Lao Wu: Rush to eat.
Old White: Who's the leftovers?
The ex-wife watched her ex-husband sought for it, but it was actually a little sour. Miss Li's personality is more reserved, and she wants to take it back. Gloria was out of the blue, "after eating and wiping his mouth, he ran.". As Lao Bai's friend, Lao Wu mistakenly entered the "Shuluo Field" and had to be responsible for playing the round field.
As the central figure, Lao Bai had to extinguish the small flame that rose because of him by blackening himself in a wronged manner.
Although there are calculations, although they beat with words, they only stop at beating, and once there is a suspicion of fire, they immediately cover up the past with a tacit smile. There is a certain secret tolerance and a different atmosphere flowing from each other.
Finally, Lao Bai concluded his speech: "A woman who has not rebelled is incomplete. ”
This is a film that fits the values of the new human beings in the 21st century from the role, personality and concept, and belongs to the contemporary adult film.
Myth and self-deception
Although "Love Myth" does not have an obvious story line, in general terms, it is actually about how love happens in reality.
In addition to the love entanglement of three women and a man. The third act of the film has a "cocoon into a butterfly" elevation, which can be called the finishing touch.
In the story, young old Wu and Italian women meet in the streets of Rome, spend a good night together, and after two days of playing, they have not seen each other in their lives. He spoke so emotionally that the crowd burst into tears, but in the most fascinating place he said, "I made it all up," and then drank with tears in his eyes, "She's gone, and my Rome has collapsed." ”
This "distancing effect" created by the narrator punctures the illusion of "love myth".
"Myths" are all deceitful, and even if they do happen, they can only be a dream, forever embedded in the depths of memory. And the film is about the "post-mythological era" of love, the love that is far away from adolescence and belongs to adults, how will come.
As for the answer, it's not complicated either. The key is mindset.
Everyone is discussing how true Lao Wu's love story is, and the audience is constantly suspicious. Lao Bai believes that the other party is blind, but the director continues to use blind methods, after the unexpected death of Lao Wu, someone has taken back the right of residence of his house from Europe, so that his love myth is always related to the distant and mysterious Europe, without giving a definitive answer.
Perhaps, love must be combined with myths, to deceive oneself a little, in order to be complete and romantic.
At the end of the film, when the protagonists are sitting on the couch watching Fellini's "Love Myth", in the camera, they are looking at us off the big screen, and we are also watching their "Love Myth".
At that moment, the fourth wall is long gone, leaving only the actors and the audience looking at each other. As if to say, similar love stories are happening anytime and anywhere. Inside and outside the movie, there is no difference.
It is also in this sense that "Love Myth" breaks the boundaries between reality and movies. It is not so much a fictional story as it is a play to reality.
"Love Myth" is a true presentation of the modern female identity value system, no desire to exclude, no suspension, no stereotypes, and like Shanghai, an international metropolis, full of open and inclusive attitude.
This kind of "female perspective" film, please do more and more.