Text/Zhu Hongjiang
How many movies have you watched in the past year? How many packs of paper towels did you cry wet?
According to people's daily, data provided by the National Film Administration and the China Film Art Research Center show that thanks to effective epidemic prevention and control and national policy guidance, China's film industry will be rapidly boosted in 2021 and continue to lead the pace of recovery of the global film industry, with a total annual box office of 47.258 billion yuan.
2021 is also a year of concentrated outbreak of Chinese family films, and women's theme films occupy an important part: "Hello, Li Huanying", "Everything About My Mother" are very clever to compose the two female protagonists as mother and daughter in the story, and explore intergenerational issues in different ways; "My Sister", "Looking for Han Ji" and "Door Lock" will bring women-related social issues to the big screen, and the realism and drama methods form a completely different perception; "Love Myth" and "First Incense" created away from the business model. The concept of love is very personal; the atypical narrative of the author's film "Lyceum Theatre" also gives the film market in 2021 an artistic texture, and "Mui Yanfang" recreates the ups and downs of the life of "Hong Kong daughter"...
The triumph of the "small pieces"
Without exception, they are not traditional commercial blockbusters, but "small films" focusing on women's themes, and most of them focus on family contradictions and social contradictions in a more unified way. The intergenerational contradiction of middle-aged women in "Everything About My Mother", the unique understanding of fertility problems in "Looking for Han", the restoration of the state of women living alone in "Door Lock"... A series of films have gone beyond using women-related stories as the essence of storytelling, but have begun to use cinema as a form to redefine some of the inherent thinking.
Last year's very brilliant "Love Myth" has received a good response from its "vertical market", this small-cost FIRST venture capital work attracted the favor of Xu Zheng, Ni Hongjie, Ma Yili and other famous actors, and there was a role of "Lao Wu", which was sought after by many literary and artistic youth, and created a rare phenomenon of Douban opening score of 8.2 and continuous maintenance of 8.3.
The success of "small films" is not accidental, the impact of the epidemic on the Chinese film market is huge, the film market in the post-epidemic era still needs a journey to seek recovery, and the emergence of warm theme works such as family and love has undoubtedly given the audience who entered the theater in various slots a reason, "Hello, Li Huanying" won 5.4 billion box office revenue with the Spring Festival file, "My Sister" obtained 860 million box office, and "Love Myth" achieved more than 100 million box office results.
But we should also look forward to the emergence of a real "big heroine" blockbuster in the film market, such themes have become a hot spot at the moment, from "Human Ghost Love" to "Big Red Lantern Hanging High", "Qiu Ju Fights a Lawsuit", and then to the "Tuya's Marriage" and "Guanyin Mountain" after the millennium, Chinese filmmakers have always explored in the field of women's theme films, and when they really enter the contemporary era of women's film and television works creation, it is difficult to see women's theme films with international influence, we can see the potential for development in "small films", At the same time, we can also look forward to the emergence of real "blockbusters".
The playfulness of the technique
"Love Myth" has been pushed onto the "altar" by Douban users since its release, not only because the theme content focuses on Shanghai, a city that emphasizes the "tone" of literature and art and the gathering of Douban users, but also for some deeper reasons.
In this film, from the title to the "Easter egg" in the film, they are telling the audience that this is a movie made for literary and artistic youth. In addition to the special style of the Shanghainese lines, Fellini's works have once again become a tool for academic film directors to highlight their artistic qualities, and the repeated use of characters in "Mustang Mane" to convey the director's own film connotations has been criticized, but the audience group of "Love Myth" is very recognized by this approach, and the wonderful love history of "Lao Wu" created by the film is also quite flexible under the interpretation of the texture of life, fellini's work "Love Myth" is no longer a simple "fan terrier" in the film. Instead, it is to transfer the middle-aged anxiety of middle-aged men to the illusion of the streets of Rome, hoping to proclaim their ideals of love to the times.
However, it only depicts the plight of middle-class men and women that the current film market lacks, but it does not really develop the narrative support of feminism, and uses Shanghainese to interpret a delicate time when a man and three women pursue comfort in the context of middle-class acquaintances in the alley, which should also be a place where literary and artistic youth and film fans are quite playful, and "Looking for Han" begins to learn from William Shakespeare's famous work "Taming" in the title of the film. Social issues such as the birth of children out of wedlock and the hukou of children are discussed in Ren Suxi, an actor with profound dramatic skills.
In the traditional view, the most important thing for a mother of a child without a hukou is to find a biological father for her child. The heroine Wang Zhao put aside the shackles and began to "look for a man", not "looking for a father" or "looking for a husband". In the film, a woman who longs to give birth to a child legally wants to find a father for her child, rather than the old-school practice of staging a lost mother's bitter pursuit of love.
And the old-school film method is not unable to make new ideas at the moment, Lou Ye's "Lyceum Grand Theatre", which was released after thousands of turns, has made a new exploration of the form and content of the film, focusing the camera on Yu Yan, who is circling with all parties, and she has become the link between all parties in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation period in the film, is she an actress? Or an agent? Or looking for old love? The complicated identity becomes a major doubt in the plot, and she has become the focus of the gaze of all powers as a woman, the film is superficially telling history, and the core is exploring the relationship between war and women.
However, the traditional reality theme is very embarrassing this year, not only the quality of the film, but the intention.
Films such as "My Sister" and "All About My Mother" depict group portraits of Chinese families, but whether they are recognized is debatable. The sister setting in "My Sister" is difficult to stand firm, and the sister's escape from the act of educating her brother runs through the whole film, excessively attributing the obstacles to women's development to the family, making the film "family affection" and "women" not stick.
The same problem appears in "Everything About My Mother", the mother played by Xu Fan becomes the link that maintains the normal operation of the family, and the sick mother-in-law and rebellious daughter have become the burden of her life. The whole film does not show its characteristics as a female character, but fills the picture with a lot of running and labor.
In addition, the Hong Kong film "Mui Yanfang" is a rare biography in theaters this year, in the era when the taste of Hong Kong films and Hong Kong is gradually fading, the emergence of "Mui Yanfang" has also won a lot of nostalgic party attention, but the lack of in-depth character narrative of the film and the charm of Mei Yanfang's own blessing have made the reputation form a big difference. The film's sincerity for Mei Yanfang's biography has long exceeded the film itself, and the cross-editing of the interpretation fragments and historical materials has awakened a memory.
The dilemma of adaptation
There have also been a number of original adaptations and localization adaptations in the mainland film industry, but they are difficult to be called good works.
"The First Burning Incense" is adapted from Zhang Ailing's most famous work " Agarwood Crumbs • First Burning Incense". Xu Anhua, who directed "Sister Tao", Wang Anyi, who created "Long Hate Song", Du Kefeng, who filmed "Chongqing Forest", Emi Wada, who designed the costumes of "Ten Faces Ambush", and Ryuichi Sakamoto, who scored the music for "The Last Emperor", the creative team is enough to describe it as luxurious.
The brilliance of the original work is that Zhang Ailing uses her unique imagery atmosphere and exquisite narrative text to construct a female image of "exhaustion of organs". In the movie, however, the image disappears. Xu Anhua's creation seems to be somewhat untitled, and has been criticized by many viewers as a "delicate" bad film.
The other two works that are localized by foreign original films are also embarrassing.
There have been many previous versions of "Door Lock", but the mainland version of "Door Lock" seems to have become an out-of-control performance of the director, and the practice of roughly shaping male villains in order to highlight female characters itself shows that the polishing of the script is not good, and the sudden action scenes and unprepared ups and downs in the later part of the film cause discomfort to the audience in terms of perception.
"Sunshine Sister Tao" reproduces the Korean original almost verbatim, but the effect presented is far from the same.
The dilemma of the adaptation of women's theme works is not the shackles of the original framework, if the transformation of text film and television is to convert one language into another language, then transplanting foreign original films is the localization of the spiritual core, if you simply reproduce audio-visual, China's film industry level can be completely done, the real dilemma lies in whether the filmmakers understand the film as art, whether they really use the specific female issues to explore with pictures when creating, rather than transforming male characters into gender and self-proclaimed as "women's films".
Because the so-called women's films are not film works that only represent women's positions and present female roles, but really present female individuals who get rid of the dilemma of male power and maintain independence in film works, and they no longer focus on attracting the audience with pure and beautiful female images, and no longer rely on men to solve the contradictions in the story.
From this point of view, there is still a long way to go for Chinese women's films.
Edit: Yiren