Even more heinous than sexual assault is sexual assault disguised as love. ---- the aftermath of "Letterhead Story"
A few days ago, I watched a movie called The Tale, Chinese translated as "Letterhead Story", and after watching it, I couldn't calm down for a long time, so I wrote this article. This article contains serious spoilers.
It's a film about underage sexual assault, written and directed by Jennifer Fox, all stemming from her real experience of being sexually assaulted at the age of 13, and she even released photos of herself learning equestrianism during the summer vacation of her 13th birthday at the end of the film. Because of this, the name of the heroine of the film is Jennifer.
At the beginning of the film, the subtitle "Personal Experience" made my heart tremble slightly.
Jennifer, who is nearly fifty years old, is a documentary filmmaker and university professor, and has a boyfriend who has been engaged for 3 years. On weekdays, she carries a video camera around the world, recording women's narratives with the camera.
One day, she received a phone call and a package from her mother. Mom stumbled upon the essay she had written when she was 13 years old at home, and was very upset and kept calling to ask what was going on.
She didn't think so, insisting that this was just her first love, a normal love, but the object of the love was a little older, and her mother said that it was not normal, but she felt that her mother was making a fuss and making a fuss. But as she read the words she had written that year, the dusty memories were opened, and she began to wonder, what really happened that year? She began to search for and return to the deceased, including those friends and equestrian teachers who had attended the summer camp with her.
The whole movie is like peeling an onion, the real life of the 48-year-old heroine and the memory of the 13-year-old are intertwined, and the two lines are parallel.
At first, she thought her memory was this: at the age of 13, she was already a young girl, mature and well-developed, no different from an adult.
This summer, her parents sent her to Jane's (equestrian teacher, female) farm to practice equestrianism.
Her equestrian teacher, Jane, with her husband and children, was the most beautiful woman she had ever met, and everyone loved her, including her father, including her friends who practiced equestrianism together. Everyone agreed that this woman with her proud curves, tall figure, and attractive face was the role model of these adolescent girls, who eagerly looked forward to the future when they could become such women.
And her physical teacher Bill, male, has a handsome appearance, a strong physique, a sexy body, and a full display of male charm. Not only that, Bill is also very good at talking, likes poetry, likes literature, and has a deep soul.
These two people admire each other, communicate with each other, and their souls are infinitely close, but they respect each other, without any unruly involvement, without physical intimacy. What a desirable state.
Jennifer, 13, is the eldest daughter in the family and has four younger siblings in addition to her. Mom is busy taking care of her younger siblings every day, busy until the sky is dark, there is no time to take care of her growing up, Dad is a big real estate developer, every day busy with development projects to earn money. There was no doubt that she was lonely, and she felt like an invisible child who was not seen, and even if she disappeared, no one would notice.
And she is a child in adolescence, with a delicate mind. For her at this moment, the two teachers were like fairies standing on the clouds, making her look up. But these two teachers are not only not high on top, but they are also very approachable, see her! Respect her, care about her, talk with her about the world, talk about poetry, talk about life, talk about all metaphysical topics. This is simply fairy under mortals! She received love and attention from both teachers.
So she fell and fell irrepressibly in love with them.
But what is it actually like?
First of all, the 13-year-old is not a well-developed mature girl. After opening her mother's treasured family photo album, she found that the 13-year-old was just a childish and timid hairy child. She didn't even have a period.
Secondly, Equestrian Teacher Jane and Physical Strength Teacher Bill are not as white and flawless as she remembered before, they are lovers, and they are extramarital affairs.
And she was not unaware, she knew, and also expressed congratulations. It can be seen that her memory is wrong, and her memory has been tampered with.
Who tampered with her memory? Tampered with by herself. Why? Because Bill and Jane join forces, Jane brings her to Bill, who uses her childlike innocence to deceive her and make her sincerely believe that everything that happens between her and Bill is love. Persuaded and planned by Bill and Jane, she even agreed to cheat on her parents, falsely claiming to be going to a field race in another state over the weekend, but actually participating in the four-person love party organized by Bill.
Although Bill can lie to her, she can lie to herself, but the body's reaction will not deceive people, she clearly remembers that she will vomit every time after having sex with Bill, and she also remembers that in the morning of the foursome, she had inexplicable stomach pains, only until her mother called Bill to cancel the track and field competition, and her stomach pain was healed without medicine.
In her ignorance, she actually realized that all this was wrong, but this consciousness was so painful that she had to constantly subconsciously anesthetize herself, telling herself that this was a love affair, that she was not a poor victim, and that Bill loved herself. A sexual assault is thus glorified into a love.
But sexual assault is sexual assault. What is false is false, no matter how beautiful. Really is real, though vicious. Can sexual assault disguised as love make the victim's life a little better?
The film's narrative is restrained, with almost no sensational crying scenes, even when the 48-year-old confronts the accomplished Bill: "Why did you do this to me back then?!" There was no hysterical scene, and even this questioning was carried out with tears and laughter.
At the end of the film, there is no Shuangwen bridge that the audience expects, Bill is not discredited, the equestrian teacher Jane is not imprisoned, and they do not even repent. Equestrian teacher Jane is very calm and rational to drive the heroine out of the house. Bill successfully hid in the venue and escaped the questioning of the hostess. The audience who witnessed all this also regained their calm after a brief period of doubt and gaze. It was as if it had never happened. The calm of all people was not destroyed, except for the victim and her parents. The victim's life is torn apart forever. It is precisely this contrast between this undeserved calm and the victim being torn apart that brings a strong impact to the people and makes the audience tremble endlessly.
In recent years, there have been many films about the sexual assault of minors, such as "The Melting Pot", "Suyuan" and "Carnival". Among the many films of similar themes, this film is very good. It's outstanding not entirely because of the chosen subject matter, but more importantly, the angle from which the subject matter is handled. It is another reminder that rape, especially for parents, is not violent and does not necessarily have physical scars on the body. Rape can also appear in this warm vein. Or, more precisely, the film reminds us that sexual abuse of children may be more like this. According to rainn, a non-profit organization against sexual assault in the United States, only 7% of all sexual assaults against children are committed by strangers. Of the remaining 93 per cent, 59 per cent were committed by acquaintances and 34 per cent by family members.
The second most commendable part of this film is that it uses a first-person perspective to truly reproduce the inner world of the sexually abused person, and very delicately portrays the psychological changes of minors, this desire to grow up, the desire for respect, and equality, and how to be used by bad people a little bit, lured into a trap. For every parent, parent who is ready to welcome their child's adolescence, this film is a very good teaching material.
Generally speaking about the theme of sexual assault, the narrative revolves around sexual assault, stops at sexual assault, and occasionally involves the recovery of responsibility for sexual assault, but there is not much to tell about the victim's destroyed life. However, this film uses flashbacks to re-examine her life from the perspective of the heroine who is nearly 50 years old, so that the audience can more clearly see the impact of this warm pulse of sexual assault on the child's life and the impact on the child's parents.
For example, Jennifer is nearly fifty years old, still unmarried and childless, and despite her boyfriend's repeated marriage proposals, she still has no desire to enter marriage. Another example is that Jennifer began to firmly hate children when she was 13 years old, and she did not marry or have children in this life, is this her free and autonomous choice or the consequence of being sexually assaulted by Bill? What's even more frightening is that until then, she had always thought that this was her own choice. That is to say, she has lived in the shadow of sexual assault all her life without knowing it.
Jennifer Fox is brave. She wrote this autobiographical novel and made the film.
Thank you to her for showing us such a real and cruel movie. Sometimes, cruelty is necessary because the world can be cruel. This is a film worth watching by every parent.
This is the first sense of the aftermath, the second and third of the perception have been written, see the link for details.
What kind of children are more likely to be sexually assaulted - "Letterhead Story" view of the second feeling
Adolescence is a very troublesome age - "Letterhead Story" after the view of the third
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About the author: A middle-aged woman with two treasures at home, a former lawyer, now living in the United States, living a life of looking up to God's grace with a left-handed diaper and a right-hand rag.