Recently, a newcomer director's work has attracted everyone's attention, Douban score 8.0, not only has no trace of jerkiness, but also the afterglow is long, permeated with if there is no mourning -
"Lonely Taste"
This is the film debut of director Xu Chengjie, starring Chen Shufang, Xie Yingxuan and others, telling the story of an unidentified father, Chen Bochang, who abandoned his wife and daughter, leaving his wife and four daughters alone in an empty house.
The eldest daughter is an international dancer who loves freedom all her life and often uses active physical contact to gain intimacy.
The second daughter inherited the tradition of studying medicine in her mother's family and worked as a plastic surgeon in Taipei, with a successful career and a harmonious family.
The third daughter is still young and carefree, choosing to inherit the family restaurant, but also secretly contacting her father who is far away in Taipei.
After his wife Lin Xiuying left, he worked hard to support three children, and fried shrimp rolls from a street stall to a big shop.
Such an ending, in itself, is not bad, but the creation of people, on the day of Lin Xiuying's seventieth birthday, her husband who is far away in Taipei just passed away, and his last wish before his death was to want his soul to return to his hometown.
Although the birthday banquet had to continue to be held, Lin Xiuying could not help but resent a few words: "There has been no contact for more than ten years, and when you die, you will come back to find trouble. ”
The film also began a symbolic two-line narrative, it turned out that when Lin Xiuying was young, her husband Chen Bochang was not a good stubble, whenever there was no money available, he looked for Lin Xiuying for money in the name of doing business, took the money to find a woman to mess with, and was also caught raping in bed, jumping off the building in a hurry, breaking his leg, hurting his eyes, and since then he has always worn sunglasses.
The father wearing sunglasses makes the image of Chen Gong not only an ordinary father, but also a symbolic color, just like his identity in the film, his origin is unknown, like a ghost.
The ghost of the father is a cliché in art films.
For Lin Xiuying, this ghostly husband is not something that can be ended by death. She had neatly packed her husband's old belongings, and the photos were reluctant to be discarded, and the divorce certificate that symbolized the separation of the two parties had not been signed.
Although she also knew that many things were no longer possible with the death of her husband. But she still has a knot in her heart, and her husband has been living in Taipei for more than a decade with a lady named Miss Cai.
This Miss Cai, whom she had never seen, she really wanted to meet, what kind of sacredness was it. As if seeing her, the outline of her husband's life for more than ten years can be clearly unfolded to her.
For Miss Cai, Lin Xiuying's ambivalent psychology is at a glance, on the one hand, she is eager to see her face, but when she dials Miss Cai's phone, she is silent, short of breath, and hurriedly hangs up the phone.
In a way, she was a loser and psychologically disadvantaged. What's more, decades of resentment can not be so easily prepared.
In the most wonderful scene in the film, the "Lingtang Fighting Method" scene, the Taoist priest invited by Lin Xiuying to dance the gun and get the stick, the Daoist friend invited by Miss Cai to silently recite the scriptures, a Tao, a Buddha, absurd and funny, this postmodern collage picture profoundly tells the state of mind of the two people.
The Taoist priest invited by Lin Xiuying moved, suggesting the release of Lin Xiuying's inner emotions; the monk invited by Ms. Cai was Jing, hinting at Ms. Cai's expression of love.
But just like the funny story of this film, the encounter between good people and good people is often a farce.
After seeing Ms. Cai in the Buddhist Hall, Lin Xiuying finally came to the answer, Ms. Cai is just a bitter woman like her.
To some extent, Ms. Cai is even more bitter, she has accompanied Chen Gong for more than ten years, nameless and unworthy, and she has not been supported by public opinion.
The pain of life, you can only know yourself.
And the comfort of family and friends can sometimes only be scratched by the boots, so they hide themselves in thick shells so as not to hurt each other.
From a secular point of view, the eldest daughter can be described as a scumbag, she is abusive, uncertain, obviously has a husband who is obedient and has a good future, but she is ruthless everywhere, smokes and drinks, and ends up with a cancer.
But on the other hand, she did not want her mother to worry and hide her illness, did not want anyone to share her pain, and took on the coming storm alone.
The second daughter's life seems to be complete, but she is too worried about her daughter's way forward, so that she unconsciously lives into the way she once hated. The tone of forcing her daughter to study abroad is like that of a mother at that time.
The three daughters who have different positions always sympathize with their father and work against their mothers, because their father's past, their mothers and sisters never mentioned, and she had no way of knowing.
In addition, there is a daughter who has been passed on to others, and when this daughter worships her father, Lim Xiuying does not dare to face it, but when the daughter opens her mouth, her gushing thoughts turn into a question of concern: "Is it customary to live in Singapore?" Did your husband come back with you? ”
Life is contradictory to this point, where there will be a clear answer.
Perhaps the greatest suffering in the world is that knowing that it is unfair, we prefer to find a fairness; knowing that it is absurd, we prefer to find a reason; knowing that there is no answer, we want to find an answer.
This is probably the connotation of the title "Lonely Taste", and the only thing that can be determined in life is the taste of loneliness.
Just like the English title of the film", "Little Big Women", it is a contradictory identity, both a small woman and a big woman, and loneliness is not a black and white life course.
"Lonely Taste" is easily flattened into a feminist film.
Taiwanese films have always been based on youth, same sex, and women, which has a more far-reaching background.
The new film's pioneering work, "A Day on the Beach," is a similar film in which the sudden disappearance of the husband finally awakens his wife's conscious consciousness and eventually moves towards self-reliance.
Thirty years later, "Lonely Taste" has expressed far beyond a symbolic, political, and social consciousness.
In fact, the lonely taste is about people, regardless of men and women, but it gives most of the pen and ink to women, so that men become embellishments.
Just like the ghost father Chen Gong in the film, he has very little ink, and the story of his youth is easy to think that this is a frivolous and wandering man.
But his dying words, "I want to go home," have hinted at the state of mind behind the film.
Lin Xiuying has a heart knot, Chen Gong also has, the two who have long been separated, but like a mirror reflect each other's inner world.
"Lonely Taste" is also easily reminiscent of Ang Lee's "Eating Men and Women".
However, unlike Ang Lee, who combines Chinese and Western styles and prefers the expression mode of external dramatic conflict, "Lonely Taste" basically presents the mood of the characters with a Chinese-style implicit, and the director presents the aesthetics of conflict in a point-to-point manner.
There are contradictions, there are struggles, more in the heart, a person alone to bear, this is the deep meaning of "loneliness".
To be alone is to not let others know.
The infinite meaning of "Lonely Taste" comes from this repressive expression, from the perspective of the story, everyone's situation is a real and credible existence, whether it is Lin Xiuying or Ms. Cai, behind their mutilated expression, the audience can see a complete and living person.
Lonely and tough, contradictory and forced to reconcile with life and history, like ants and heroes.
Ba shudder