Speaking of the first controversial work of the beginning of the year, it is probably this "Girl with a Bright Future".
As a film based on the theme of female revenge, it has received very two-level evaluations, but it has also made more and more audiences interested.
Cathy, who is about to turn thirty, drops out of medical school and works in a café, has no career ideals, does not love to travel, and maintains a skillful indifference to the "human" species.
But is that all she's about in her life?
This is not the case, Cathy is a well-behaved woman on the surface, but in private she is a goddess of vengeance deeply rooted in nightclubs and bars.
Whenever Cathy pretended to be drunk in the bar, there would always be slightly drunk beasts to take her away and try to sexually assault her.
They also fall into Cathy's trap, and she will suddenly wake up at the right time, debunk and shock these men, and warn them never to take a drunken girl home again, or they will not be so lucky.
These men don't know that the fire of revenge will always burn somewhere, and women are more than they see.
Speaking of the most distinctive female characters in European and American film and television dramas in recent years, Villanelle in "Kill Eve" is one, Villanelle has no principles, has a changeable temperament, and is fierce when assassinating, but it is loved by the audience.
The director and writer of "Girl with a Bright Future" is Emerald Fennell, the co-writer of the first two seasons of "Killing Eve", so the tone, soundtrack and editing style of the film are also quite similar to the series.
Compared to Villanelle, Cathy is also a somewhat rebellious, unconventional female character, abandoning everything and making revenge her only job in order to get the punishment she deserves.
In the film, Fennell paints a layer of easy-to-eat sugar coating for the fierce revenge theme, and Cathy's appearance in the film is like a professional Internet celebrity on Instagram, exuding a femininity of pandering inside and out.
Shots skimmed over her body again and again, capturing her high-waisted jeans, floral blouse and playful braids...
Cathy uses the feminine feature as a weapon, sometimes acting as a non-threatening lamb, and then pulling out a sword that seals her throat.
The reason why she is obsessed with revenge is actually because of an old story. Years ago, her college girlfriend Nina was sexually assaulted by a fellow schoolboy after getting drunk.
The students present at the time all chose to be silent about this, and in order to calm things down, the school also handled it passively, and none of them chose to believe what happened to Nina.
Nina dropped out of school, and in order to take care of her, Cathy also dropped out of school, she has been with Nina, but Nina still chose to commit suicide.
But the matter did not end, because Cathy's notebook recorded the names of all sinners.
Those who watch the tragedy unfold without stopping, those who stand on the side of sexual assault and do not want to ruin their future, and those who defend sexual assault in court for profit...
And, of course, there's the sexual assault of El Monroe, who is still at large and about to marry his wife into a decent middle-class life.
In Cathy's eyes, these people are the murderers who caused Nina's death, but she is not irrational enough to let them die, but plans to let them experience the fear that Nina suffers.
Just like the female classmate who once thought Nina was "overreacting", she called Nina's cry a crocodile tear. And she doesn't believe Nina because "bitches don't deserve to be trusted."
Then there's Principal Walker, who shielded El Monroe on the grounds that "you can't ruin a young man's life."
The most chilling thing is that they are all women, not only do not feel sympathy for Nina's plight, but even forget that such a "victim" once existed.
But neither of them is as hypocritical as Ryan, and surprisingly, he and Cathy actually have a relationship in the movie.
Fennell reproduced the "youth idol film" in this branch of the plot, shattering the ideal love paradigm of young men and women for decades.
Lane is funny, excellent, gentle... It fits all the signs of a perfect man, and even Cathy believes it.
But when Cathy gets the video of Nina being sexually assaulted, she discovers that Ryan is one of the onlookers.
Cathy eventually chose revenge and used her own death as evidence to send El Monroe to the police station.
This ending is a bit sloppy, in fact, the real highlight of the film is from Cathy's death to a small section before the case is solved, Fennell left enough room for men to clean up, and it is ironic to see them hug each other and comfort each other.
El Monroe, who killed Cathy, once again pretended to be a frightened victim, while those around him still didn't feel he was committing a crime, just told him "you didn't do anything wrong".
The female characters are absent for a moment, staring at the hypocrisy of the men, and this scene is already a naked satire on rape culture.
In past film and television works, the way to show similar tragedies is often to emphasize the destructiveness of rape culture, and the tragic experiences of female characters will make the audience empathize, and then hate the perpetrator, and attribute the occurrence of the tragedy to "personal morality" problems.
In recent years, as the women's movement has developed, discussions about sexual assault have become more common and in-depth, and people have found that merely retelling the tragedy does not play a substantial role.
So Fennell is not satisfied with the past narrative, but reconstructs the whole process of victimization, and the film directly points to the systematic cover-up, rather than a specific person.
Whether it's the man who "picks up the body" in the bar, or the object of Cathy's revenge all the way, they all have one thing in common, that is, they will not be punished for "inaction".
In contrast, El Monroe, who has been repeatedly shielded in the film, is not a demonic character, but appears cowardly and ordinary, but he commits crimes without punishment, which shows that the undiminished number of female victimization cases is more of a systemic problem.
But as a movie, "Girl with a Bright Future" has also suffered great doubts, and some viewers believe that this is a cool film specially made for female audiences, which is to make women cool and men unhappy.
Is this really the case?
In fact, female audiences did not feel "very cool" when watching the film, because the men here were not tortured and killed, but Cathy sacrificed herself to the "belated truth".
If there is really emotion, it will also be "anger" and "fear".
Like Cathy, they will be angry at the "shelter" that society has built for sexual assault, and the existence of this "shelter" is the biggest cause of women's frequent victimization.
Fennell shows this social cover-up in great detail, friends, family, school, public opinion, justice... All under wraps, El Monroe grew up completely under patriarchal coddling.
And "fear" comes from the scene where Cathy is murdered.
Cathy struggles under the pillow and loses her breath, El Monroe's engorged muscles and bulging green tendons are all recreating real violence, and the next morning, the camera slowly slides over Cathy's body, and the women really feel the feeling of "he wants to kill you", which seems to be no stranger.
But the discomfort of male audiences after watching the film is also real.
Cathy is both the only important character and one with a "God perspective", after all, she has cleverly planned her own death.
The discomfort of the male characters stems from feeling the threat of being stared at, and the film sets a red line for these male characters, warning them that they will pay blood debts.
So is there a distance between "real reality" and "the presentation of the film"?
From the perspective of artistic processing, "The Girl with a Bright Future" is not so realistic, it is more of a work that follows the logic of the play.
But from the perspective of social issues, the reality will only be more brutal than the film, which obviously deletes more bloody details, but female audiences can still feel the crisis approaching.
Perhaps what makes "Girls with a Bright Future" so great is that it doesn't want to forgive, it wants criminals and accomplices to feel the oppression of real-time surveillance and let them review their moral bottom line.
Maybe people will be frightened by Cathy's revenge, but the core of the film is derived from the truth, it is not only for women to see the revenge film, because women will not enjoy the pleasure of revenge success, they will only be angry because of the success of sexual assault, now is so, and will be so in the future.
Hours 24th floor cinema