"Love Myth" is the most surprising comedy movie in this year's Lunar New Year slot, and it is also the most suitable love film for couples or couples to watch together.
Unlike Feng Xiaogang's Jingweier New Year comedy, this is a chic and novel Shanghainese romantic comedy. The wonderful fusion of petty bourgeois mood and city fireworks, funny lines and literary and artistic styles are integrated, and ordinary audiences and literary and artistic youth can find fun and have some insights.
"Love Myth" is produced by Xu Zheng, written and directed by Shao Yihui, a newcomer female director after the 90s, starring Xu Zheng, Ma Yili, Wu Yue, Ni Hongjie, Zhou Yemang, Huang Minghao, Wang Yinglu, Ning Li, Zhang Zhihua, and Wu Mian.
The synopsis of the film is as follows:
Miss Li (played by Ma Yili) lives a single life with her daughter. Bei Bei (played by Wu Yue), who is keen to dance tango after divorce. Gloria (played by Ni Hongjie), rich and idle husband missing. Three completely different women intersect because of Lao Bai (played by Xu Zheng). Shanghai's uncle Lao Bai called himself a miscellaneous family and specialized in teaching the elderly to draw. Lao Bai's good friend Lao Wu (played by Zhou Ye Mang) talks funny and chases romance all his life. A few meals made the living room of the old white family a meeting point for everyone. Three women and two men, in the modern capital of Shanghai, with wisdom and humor, depict a variety of fireworks in the city.
"Love Myth" was released on December 24, Douban opened with a score of 8.1 points, and the next day rose to 8.3 points, which is the highest rated domestic comedy and love film in Douban in recent years, and together with "Lion Boy", it has become the two major surprises of Chinese movies at the end of 2021.
From the perspective of title and genre, "Love Myth" is a romantic comedy, but she is so unique that she completely walks out of the traditional domestic romantic comedy film, which makes the audience refreshed.
First, let's talk about the comedic elements and bridges of the film.
In 1997, Feng Xiaogang's "Party A and Party B" opened the Chinese mainland film market New Year file. Since then, watching comedy in the Lunar New Year has almost become a common practice. In recent years, although comedy is no longer the main meal of the Lunar New Year, it is still an indispensable dish, and "Love Myth" chose to be released in the prime time of the Lunar New Year, which undoubtedly chose the right schedule.
"Love Myth" is not only different from Feng Xiaogang's Jingweier New Year comedy in that year, but also very different from the happy twist comedy on the screen in recent years, which is a new and unique Shanghainese comedy with a completely different comedy style from the first two.
Watching the three women in the film fight gracefully and decently, using Wu Nong's soft language to say the lines of frequent golden sentences; watching Lao Bai take care of them left and right between the three women but without losing grace; listening to Lao Bai's friend Lao Wu (played by Zhou Ye Mang) tell about the true and false romantic love between him and the Italian female star, this kind of comedy and drama effect is very rare in domestic movies.
The scene where the old Bai asked Miss Lee to go to dinner at home was the most impressive. Originally it was an ambiguous date between a lonely man and a widow, but it was stirred up by Gloria, Bei Bei and Lao Wu, and became a sword with three women and two men in their hearts, the lines were witty and humorous, the sentences were hidden sharply, and the sentence "Leftovers are also robbed by wild cats" can't help but be funny.
Three women on "a woman in this life has not ... Incomplete" sentence-making competitions not only create a strong comedic effect, but also show the different values of modern women.
Xu Zheng vividly played the delicate and considerate, kind-hearted, self-made and intelligent little man in the Shanghai alley, but he was tired of coping with in front of the three women Ma Yili, Ni Hongjie and Wu Yue.
Lao Bai's ex-wife Bei Bei's sentence "I just made the mistake that men all over the world will make" made the audience laugh at the same time, but also intriguing: why can some men make mistakes so lightly and justifiably, while women who make the same mistakes are difficult to be forgiven? Even a man as honest as Lao Bai resolutely divorced Bei Bei.
Three women in one play. Three middle-aged actresses of "post-visual level" have wonderful performances in the film. Although the characters they play are all independent women, their personalities are different: Miss Li's rational and calm, Gloria's uninhibited, and Beibei's feminist consciousness not only create vivid images, but also create a lot of laughs.
More than 90% of the dialogue in "Love Myth" is Wu Nong's soft Shanghainese dialect, which is very consistent with the film's Haipai comedy style, and if it is changed to Mandarin, there is no such comedic effect and immersion at all.
Let's talk about the love elements and love scenes of "Love Myth".
In domestic romance films, I am accustomed to the vigorous youth first love and the dead and alive urban sadomasochistic love routine, and I did not expect that at the end of 2021, there will be such a different anti-routine love film.
Don't be misled by the title of the film "Love Myth", in this domestic romance film that pays tribute to the Italian film master Fellini's film of the same name, there is no love that is vigorous, love to the death and come to life, there is no love myth, only middle-aged men and women mixed with literary petty bourgeoisie and the plain love of the city fireworks.
Lao Bai fell in love with Miss Li at first sight, spent careful care to find Miss Li's home, and before he could offer his hospitality, he happened to bump into Miss Li's quarrel with her mother and the awkward side of real life.
He wanted to leave in a hurry, but was left by Miss Li with a sentence of "I want to leave after watching this drama in my house", and finally paved the way for the next date between the two on the pretext of helping Miss Li repair her shoes.
Helplessly, Lao Bai and Miss Li's subsequent private dishes and dinners were mistakenly mixed by Gloria, Bei Bei and Lao Wu into a big pot of rice, so that Miss Li saw Lao Bai's embarrassment.
After that, Miss Li and Gloria not only did not become love enemies, but became good girlfriends, helping Lao Bai realize his dream of opening a painting exhibition together, but emotionally the two have successively "broken away" from Lao Bai:
Miss Li refused Lao Bai's offer to invite her to his house for free, preferring to continue to live with her mother with her children; Gloria said to Lao Bai even more elegantly: "Teacher Bai, you are a good person, but a woman will not be with a man because he is a good person." I'm old and dangerous, you don't fall in love with me. ”
The love in "Love Myth" does not have too many emotional ups and downs, and there is no desperate impulse, only the ordinary of looking forward, thin water, and fireworks in the city, which looks like a wave, in fact, this is the love of the vast majority of middle-aged people in real life, especially the love of economically independent literary and artistic petty bourgeois women.
They will be moved by a middle-aged man like Lao Bai who has a literary style, economic conditions, and thoughtfulness at a certain moment, but reason makes them return to reality and return to calm.
Just as Miss Li set the sketch that Lao Bai drew for herself as a mobile phone lock screen wallpaper, she calmly said to Lao Bai: "When I saw this painting, I was still a little sad in my heart, and when I was young, I ate this set the most." ”
Zhou Yemang, who played Lin Chong in the CCTV version of the TV series "Water Margin", played Lao Bai's friend and neighbor Lao Wu in "Love Myth". This is an old Shanghai Keler who hangs on his young affair all day long, looks unreliable, but is Lao Bai's close friend and curator of the latter's exhibition.
Lao Wu told the romantic love story of his young encounter with Sophia Roland in Europe when he was young, dreaming and confused, true and false, making people feel that life is like a movie, like a dream, true and false.
Zhou Yemang's superb acting skills and profound line skills in playing this role have made him a strong contender for best supporting actor in the major domestic film awards next year.
Only in the romantic love story told by Lao Wu can love be called a myth. And between Lao Bai and Miss Li, Gloria and Bei Bei, the love that they want to develop overnight and have been ambiguous is inseparable from real life and feminism, which is the truth of adult love.
"Love Myth" is a bold breakthrough and innovation of the domestic romantic comedy genre film, hoping that its unique Shanghainese romantic comedy style and good reputation can attract more audiences into the theater and boost the box office to achieve counterattack.