The ego in love is a passionate machine that desperately creates symbols and then makes them for their own consumption.
- Roland Barthes, "Lover's Whisper"
The gentle drizzle that falls in the afternoon, the umbrella that supports each other, the intention of guessing each other, and the ambiguity that has been silent for many years ferments under the slanting sun. On that sunny and rainy afternoon, the lovers turned themselves into inexplicable symbols, folding themselves in half and then in half, and secretly putting themselves in each other's left atrium pockets.
"That Year, Our Summer" is a whisper in the ear of a lover, nagging the chaos, suspicion, loss and beauty of love in a real and earnest tone. The protagonists, Choi Woong, and Guo Yanxiu met and fell in love in high school because they participated in the filming of the documentary, and after breaking up for many years, they reunited again because the documentary became popular on the Internet. Why is the seemingly bland and clichéd love story so popular with the audience?
There are many love stories in this world, but it is difficult to tell a love story well.
"That Year, Our Summer" has a delicate and layered control of the characters' emotions, and the expression of emotions is rich and introverted. It takes us through the four seasons of Choi Woong and Kuni Yanxiu: summer when love is budding, winter when we are expressive, spring when cherry blossoms fall when we are in love, and autumn when we reunite again after parting.
Interestingly, the show uses a lot of symbolic metaphors, including: each episode has a corresponding classic movie subtitle, and the fourth episode "Those Years, The Boy We Liked?" girl? 〉A tribute to the nine-knife youth movie "Those Years, the Girl We Chased Together" - the same as the movie, the play also tells the love story of the first and last place in the school. The eighth episode, "Before Sunset", also echoes "Love at Sunset in Paris", also for men and women who have been separated for many years, and reunite after many years.
Perspective in those love stories: organic storytelling
The structure of "That Year, Our Summer" is organic, and each other's thoughts and perspectives are intertwined, forming a huge web, and integrating the male and female protagonists' inner monologues and third-party perspectives to compose a staggered, multi-tone music.
The male and female protagonists' gazes on each other are intimate and belong to the lover's perspective. The third episode is subtitled "Ten Reasons I Hate You", in which Choi-woong counts the countless shortcomings of her relationship with Guo Yanxiu: selfishness and lack of social skills, wanting to compete for the first place in everything, and not romantic at all. Just like when preparing for an exam, he would rather tear up his notes than lend them to his classmates, Guo Yanxiu is a selfish woman. In fact, that selfish Yanxiu would secretly put together the shredded notes when everyone couldn't see them, and then teach them to Cui Xiong one by one. Under her bad temper of wanting to compete for the first place in everything, she will also responsibly carry Cui Xiong home who lost the drinking game. There is also the Yanxiu who does not understand romance at all, who will grab a handful of cherry blossoms and leave cui xiong's most romantic surprise after a full day's work, and she always remembers the other party's wish to see the cherry blossom trees.
In the daily life of those little bits of lovers, the dislikes seen by outsiders have turned into lovers' likes. The script of the whole play is layered, and the most superficial shortcomings are all turned into treasures in love. Among Cui Xiong's various shortcomings, what really makes it difficult for him to let go is: "She always erases me from her life too easily."
This is the perspective that belongs to Cui Xiong, who is cruelly abandoned by the other party after experiencing the throbbing and sweetness in love. However, in addition to seeing Cui Xiong's intoxication and heartbreak, the play also shows Yanxiu's weakness and inferiority in love.
From Yan Xiu's point of view, the audience sees that she is suffering from the pressure of her family being destroyed by a debt collection group and then being forced to move, her grandmother being hospitalized due to illness, and the high medical expenses that need to be hospitalized, which makes her almost suffocate in life. When she firmly proposed to break up, Choi Hung said, "Of all the things you have, am I the easiest to give up?" "No, I can give up, you're the only one," Yanxiu replied. In this breakup scene, Yan Xiu explains the reason for the breakup with multiple negative sentences, layer by layer into the heart of the character: "Because the reality facing the two is different", "No, in fact, it is because I can't even bear my real life now", "No, in fact, the real reason is that I am afraid that if I continue to interact, my strong sense of inferiority will be seen through by you".
When the audience almost had to accept the embarrassing real life and the strong sense of inferiority in love, forcing the two to break up, it was not until the last moment that she really revealed the reason for the breakup: "The reason why we broke up was because I was too arrogant, and I arrogantly thought that I could live without you." 」
Space and Dimension in Love: The Metaphor of Space
In high school, Cui Xiong and Guo Yanxiu used to live in the same neighborhood, and every corner of the community had their own marks: waiting for each other to go to school together at the intersection of the community, Cherry Blossom Kiss in front of the supermarket door, and Cui Xiong standing in front of Yanxiu's door waiting for his girlfriend. After the two broke up, Yan Xiu moved away from the community due to family economic problems, she worked hard all the way to find a job, work hard, and the life trajectory was getting farther and farther away from the man, and it was also getting farther and farther away from the memories of the two. On the contrary, Cui Xiong, he has not left this area of his past life, just like in love, after hearing the woman's proposal to break up, he was left in the same place and never left. It wasn't until many years later that Yan Xiu moved back to the community where she once lived for some reason, and the former lovers slowly began to intersect.
Cui Xiong's existence is like a star in the infinite universe, lasting and eternal, while Yanxiu is like a planet with an unexpected trajectory deviation, but always circling around the star.
In addition to metaphorizing the emotional state of the two through their positions, the space they live in can also reflect the protagonist's heart.
Growing up, Choi Hung became a brilliant illustrator and lived in a detached villa. In Cui Xiong's living room, there is a large floor-to-ceiling window, but there is a wall vertically outside the window, just like the high wall erected in his heart under his optimistic and cheerful appearance, which does not allow people to easily enter his world. Cui Xiong's studio is located in the basement of the villa, it is private and closed to the public, and when he steps on the stairs to the basement, it is like a command to enter a dream, into the depths of his subconscious. In that studio, his paintings are carefully placed, and at the same time, they are also the most solemn display of memory. Yan xiu is the person who can walk into Cui Xiong's inner world the most, even if the two have been separated for many years, she can still walk into the studio at will and look at his paintings.
Space and architecture are the most common themes created by Cui Xiong as an illustrator, and the buildings on the paper are like falling into a frozen time and space after the lack of the existence of the characters.
As Choi Hung explains his work: "I like things that don't change and pass. People change or disappear over time, so I don't see people or time in my work." In the days when Yanxiu left him, Cui Xiong's time and space were frozen on the day of the breakup. After the two were reunited, Cui Xiong took Yanxiu to the venue in front of the opening of the exhibition, and on the wall full of paintings, condensed the countless nights after the separation, and each passing time turned into a delicate and long line under his pen, he said: "Every thin line I draw, every second that the clock second hand passes, those years, those moments, Guo Yanxiu seems to have been there all along." In those lost time and space, the other person is like "existing in another form in memory."
Since being separated from Yanxiu, Cui Xiong's time and space are frozen, like the moment when the clock breaks; on the contrary, Yan Xiu's time and space seem to be linear and constantly moving forward, but in fact it is a circular structure, and after a circle, it still returns to Cui Xiong's side.
epilogue
"That Year, Our Summer" is a symbolic poem that is organized and dismantled by lovers one by one. There is no dislike in Cui Xiong's "Ten Reasons to Hate Yanxiu", only full of likes; there is no real reason in Yanxiu's "Reason for Breaking Up", only a confession of self-arrogance.
In the end, after five years of not having each other, the two are still only in love. Text/Huang Yanxuan