Once Hong Kong movies were full of "banditry".
Nicholas Tse in "Fury" made Hong Kong film fans "return to the soul".
His gangsterism was exposed.
Questioning the injustice of power and system.
Recently, a group of young people have also returned with this temperament.
It's just that they're relatively introverted.
Pointing to the city's daily decadence and sluggishness.
Dance Party 3
01
Beings
A word on the poster: Welcome to the city.
What kind of city?
Accompanied by a strong rap, the camera reaches out to the dilapidated tenement:
Welcome to the city
Twenty-four hours
Never stopped
I want to look up at the bright moon
Accompanying me through the night is my shadow
A hip-hop dressed young man walked out of the rental house.
His mouth muttered about his own self-created rap.
Keep an eye out for the black households that have been cleared away by the security guards.
His name is Heyo (Played by Huo Jiahao) and he is a professional rapper.
Corresponding to his overflowing hip-hop spirit is his increasingly emaciated wallet.
And the inspiration for impending laziness.
I can't eat enough, I can't live, how can I play music?
I can't sleep soundly even when I sleep.
Because of sleeping, it is also against the law.
Why not consider moving elsewhere?
Rents are more expensive.
Sneaking a sleep in a commercial building is better than sleeping in the wind.
Heyo hadn't written a decent song in a long time.
Hunger for music is an outlet for talent, but hunger for life is the beginning of self-compromise.
Unwilling to change careers, he stayed up every day without being salty.
Maybe when you start a class, you can have a fixed income to eat and concentrate on art?
Nor is it.
As soon as the camera pans, a girl driving a car is arguing with the landlord about the rent increase.
She is Milk Tea (Liu Jingwen) and her job is to teach children to dance.
But even with tuition fees, she was still bothered all day.
Her favorite student, Xiao Jia, is gifted but often misses school because her father strenuously opposes his son spending money to learn hip-hop dance.
She truly loves Hiphop culture and wants to pass it on to the next generation of Hong Kongers.
It's a pity that reality is more real than hip-hop.
Music and dance, can only be played in the entertainment industry?
New actor Hana (Yan Zhuoling) also suffered a dilemma.
She is a dancer, and there will be her dance fans asking for photos when walking on the road.
But after becoming popular, she dealt with commercial performances and advertisements all day, and didn't even have time to watch dance videos.
Slowly, she also went from being a professional dancer who only danced Hiphop to being awkward in commercials.
The reporter asked her, willing to be red, or willing to have freedom?
Hana could only be silent.
In addition to self-torture, her star path is accompanied by the incomprehension of her boyfriend Dave (Yang Lewen).
Dave is a natural dancer, and he and Hana are in love because of dance.
Even though Hana gave up Hiphop to become an actress, Dave still choreographed, practiced, and competed every day.
Their lives gradually made a difference.
Gradually, Hana, who had neglected to practice, could no longer dance.
Dave finally broke out after seeing his girlfriend lose his temper when he didn't practice well:
"Actually what do you think"
"Are you really going to be a dancer?"
But is the boyfriend really such a pure dreamer?
Oh, think too much.
Dave is just as helpless in the face of reality.
So if you are not constrained, and have a certain economic strength, can you pursue artistic creation at will?
Finally, the camera is given to Ah Liang (Cai Hanyi).
Ah Liang is a YouTuber who makes a living by making short videos.
He has his own studio, free time, and small achievements.
But he did not dare to slacken off.
Vlog, I haven't eaten for more than a dozen hours.
Why?
The answer is simple.
Just eat.
Since I was poor, I don't want to go back to my poor days.
So what is creation? What is self-expression?
Any art must make way for making money.
So Ah Liang pulled the people in the studio to work overtime day and night.
Work while looking for new business opportunities.
Last time that client praised your work vividly enough
After that, he also gave us three more films for us to shoot
So you can do it right
He and his girlfriend were originally supportive partners, the original loving partners.
But now in the face of Ah Liang's crazy act of taking orders to stir up popularity, his girlfriend (played by Yi Jian'er) has gradually lost his voice.
Another precarious love.
Stop first.
"Dance 3" is definitely not a realistic documentary about how Hong Kong men and Women in the 90s were beaten down by reality.
Otherwise Sir would never recommend.
Give five seconds and let's remember these people first.
Then rewind, and it all starts at the beginning.
02
youth
"Dance Party 1", a youth film that almost won the Golden Horse Award and the Academy Award in 2013.
The plot is very simple, it is an inspirational story of a young girl who loves to dance, Ah Hua (Played by Yan Zhuoling), enters the Street Dance Club of the University, practices dancing with the president of the Street Dance Club Dave (played by Yang Lewen) and the member Milk Tea (played by Liu Jingwen), and falls in love with the Tai Chi player Ah Liang (Played by Cai Hanyi), and finally realizes self-growth.
Looking at the lineup, is it a bit familiar?
Hana, Milk Tea, Ah Liang, and Dave were all actors who starred in the first real-name film.
And everything mentioned in "Dance Party 3" is the life of everyone after the release of "Dance Party 1".
What is the purpose of the setting of the play within a play?
"Dance Faction 1" became a hit.
The heroine A Hua, who became a rising star, stage name Hana, signed the company, and the advertisement was received softly.
The male protagonist Ah Liang has also gradually become famous and has become a handsome blogger sought after by little girls.
Milk Tea returns to her job as a dance teacher, worrying about the students all day.
Only Dave insisted on the fundamentals of the dancers inside and outside the play, practicing dance and competition as always.
They call themselves KITA, which means "Kowloon Industrial Zone Artist".
Industrial zone? artist?
The taste of banter grew stronger.
In "Dance Party 1", KIDAs are full of dreams.
The kind of energy and persistence that is not afraid of heaven coexists.
Everyone loves to dance.
At that time, even if they were a little deviant, they were all small fights of love and love.
For dance, they never allowed themselves to desecrate.
Do your best, just a lot more.
The setting of the play-within-a-play breaks the dimensional wall, allowing the same group of actors to continue their stories in different contexts.
The KIDA people who have left the campus finally have to face a decadent reality.
Call you hip hop spirit, hip hop spirit.
The city will grind all the will into the same spirit - "there is no spirit".
The average price of hong Kong house prices per set was $1.235 million (converted to RMB8.28 million), the highest in the world.
Working, earning money, buying a house, life cools all the blood.
When director Huang Xiuping portrays the growth and frustration of THE NIDAs here, he mentions what his favorite Iwai Shunji's "Fireworks" conveys:
"A small child changes into a very hazy momentary state between adults."
Sir felt that he was more naked than Shunji Iwai.
"This moment" happened too naturally in Dance Faction 3.
When the tide of youth recedes, it seems that only a bare reef can be left.
Finally, one night, Heyo's master angrily asked him why he wanted to commercialize his music.
Once upon a time there was a tiger
It was meant to prove itself to be a tiger
And walked into the zoo
In that case, is it still a tiger?
In the face of Master's ridicule, Heyo could no longer contain his emotions and responded:
But there is no food in this forest
I can't eat enough food, and how can I take care of spiritual food?
What they used to be most proud of now is what can sting them the most.
What capital pours down and suppresses is all-round freedom.
03
Warm up
Between "Dance Party 3" and "Dance Party 1", shouldn't there be another 2?
The director simply let it go and gave "Crazy Dance 2" full rights to the actors to play freely.
So the whole 7-minute short film, apart from the nonsense funny, the only focus is to explain the origin of the character of Heyo in the third part (the first part did not have him).
In order to break the "fourth wall", the director even invited Baby John, the actor who plays Ah Liang, to comment.
A complete sequel to "Broken Jar Broken".
Director Huang Xiuping, in addition to breaking the tradition of the film in form, also jumped out of the conventional routine of youth films in terms of content.
Of course, this kind of jumping out is also quite risky.
The entire "Dance Party 3", and even the filming process of "Dance Party 2", gave Sir the impression:
Runaway.
On the one hand, the director still maintains the background of Hong Kong films, hoping to penetrate the depression of reality and give voice to the grassroots at the bottom;
On the one hand, this desire to speak out is too much, too complicated, and gradually degenerates into the proposition that the youth has passed away.
Don't get me wrong, Sir is in no way opposed to film writing reality.
But "Dance 3" really exposes the old flaws in the creative technique:
The form is greater than God.
We can see all kinds of slogans in the movie, complaining, anger.
Even Sir can find metaphorical images in some of the paintings:
Windows painted with "×".
The performer who betrays himself under a mask.
Only, what about the protagonist?
"Crazy Dance Party", the protagonist is a dance.
Sorry, Sir really didn't see much of a scene that was really focused on "dancing".
The first "Crazy Dance School", of course, also has many technical flaws and creative limitations.
But why has it still touched us?
In retrospect, Sir remembers those "quiet moments":
A focus on dance.
Obsession with dance.
It is these young people who think they are enough weapons to fight the world.
Unsurprisingly, DanceMania 3 ended in a big chicken soup.
It was a rare big dance scene.
Hana returns to the place where she used to practice dancing with Dave;
Ah Liang also picked up the stick and relived the Tai Chi he was most familiar with;
Dave dances with his companions in the distant land of Hiphop;
Milk Tea paused and concentrated on practicing dance in the dance studio.
And, of course, Heyo, who returned to where he first sang street rap.
In that place, there were graffiti painted to him by his master.
A tiger.
Moving?
Moved, of course.
But is this moment of emotion a self-touching that is once again tickling the boots in the face of reality?
This is probably the opposite of the film's reflection of reality.
Movies want to care about reality.
In the end, the movie became less like a movie.
Of course, Sir still got a little touch.
The last scene of the movie.
Xiao Jia, a student of Milk Tea, danced in the sunset in the face of the real estate infrastructure that was about to start construction.
Opposite, rusty cranes, and tall buildings in the distance.
If this scene represents inheritance.
Sir hopes that what will be passed on is not the numb sigh of adults.
It is the indomitable naivety and concentration of youth.
The picture in this article comes from the network
Editorial Assistant: Wear Prada's pumpkin