She stood in the hazy streets of London, her tear-soaked smoky makeup, she had no name, and if she wanted, she was given the nickname "Fleabag".
Fleabag：a dirty and/or unpleasant person or animal—《Cambridge Dictionary》”（邋遢的人）
Over the course of two seasons, we've seen how Fleabag has gone from honestly exposing his inner ruins to slowly reclaiming the messy rubble and paving a path of farewell.
S1 (Season 1): "I just want to cry, all the time." (I just wanted to cry, all the time)
Looking at the barren weeds growing in the ravines of resentment, she did not mean to "sell misery", and often laughed at herself for using the weeds as a garden.
Fleabag and Boo open a guinea pig-themed café in London. However, Boo died in a recent traffic accident, and she wanted to pretend to be a minor accident to gain the sympathy of her cheating boyfriend, but it eventually led to tragedy. We gradually discover that Boo's death is constantly and heavily attached to Fleabag.
Fleabag's mother died a few years ago, and she and her sister Claire deal with her injuries in a very different way. Fleabag runs a café casually with different men, while Claire pursues "middle-class success" wholeheartedly, dresses as Burberry and lives with her husband, even though he tries to kiss his sister at his own birthday party.
After attending a talk together, Claire tries to hug her sister and is treated as an "attack" by Fleabag.
Together, the sisters revealed their dislike for their stepmother (originally the godmother). The godmother was a gifted artist, and her harsh words showed her stepdaughters that she controlled your father, and it was better not to mess with me.
The godmother once held a "Sexhibition" party. At the party, her father persuades Fleabag to serve alcohol in exchange for peace with her godmother, but she accidentally breaks the quilt; to make matters worse, Claire tells Fleabag that she does not believe her sister's accusations against her husband, and alludes to the fact that Fleabag is hard to trust because she is the target of Boo's boyfriend's cheating, which indirectly leads to the death of her best friend. The sister's words were like swords, cutting off the wild weeds that were growing wildly, revealing Fleabag's unforgettable evil.
"Sex is a thing":
Fleabag's candor with sex is astonishing and "dangerous", and sex is nothing more than a stimulus, reminding her to "live" in her bitter life and suppressing her heart that is empty due to pain.
She often breaks the fourth wall in the sex scene, flirts with the camera, makes her own comments in the vibration of the bed board, and responds with a sincere, respectful, and mysterious smile, forming a different kind of dramatic tension, as if she is ours, but it is just a seemingly intimate glimpse.
S2 (Season 2): "It will pass." (That will pass)
When he saw her gradually lost in the ruins, he always hoped that she would be saved, but this salvation was religious.
Father, yes, father. The indulgent Fleabag and the ascetic priest are like creatures of the poles of the earth, and their connections are potentially dangerous in different ways. She threatened his embrace of abstinence; he shook the hedonism she embraced. But their connection is sincere and fiery, and in the confessional room of the fourth episode, a "Kneel" is destined to become the most moving and sexy scene in recent years.
In the confessional room, she confessed that she was so afraid, afraid of forgetting and loneliness, afraid that one day even sexual pleasure would become perjury of "living"
When Fleabag is honest with himself, we finally believe that Fleabag "knows more about love than others, so he finds it all so painful." ”
We will also eventually find that the arrival of the priest is only a reverie, but it is beautiful but short-lived.
The priest eventually separated from Fleabag
"Breaking The Fourth Wall":
The fourth wall, short for fourth wall, belongs to the theatrical term and refers to a fictitious "wall" in a traditional three-walled mirror-frame stage. It allows the audience to see the audience in the play. On another level, the appearance of the audience in movies and TV shows can be seen as "breaking the fourth wall".
Breaking the Fourth Wall, as a game rooted in battlefield and confrontation, establishes a connection between the audience and the characters, and empathy is nourished.
Fleabag sat in the garden with the priest and agreed never to sleep together, then she turned to the camera and smiled at us triumphantly, "That will only last a week." This brief shot was widely praised by critics, waking the audience up with a swift gesture and reminding the audience that watching will never be neutral.
Then, the priest sensed Fleabag's shot toward the air and asked, "Where have you just been?" "Not going anywhere," she replied, casting a look of horror at the audience. (Only the priest in the play can detect Fleabag's "god tour"
It is not difficult to find that Fleabag often breaks the fourth wall to communicate directly with us, she uses confession to hide, uses the audience to escape other characters, and then escapes herself.
When asked by a psychotherapist if anyone could chat, Fleabag replied that "they" had been there and looked into the camera (alluding to the audience). This short shot subtly complicates her narrative, while also highlighting the discomfort that arises when Fleabag is understood too intimately by others.
The characters actively face the camera, changing not just the rhythm of the film, but the full picture that we are allowed to see. When they do that, we no longer see a private life. They know they are being watched and look at the others in the play from the perspective of a predator.
"It's so fucking happy to be a modern woman". ）
It was the first night that Fleabag and Boo had just set up the café, and they were celebrating when they raised their glasses.
The embodiment of modern women in the play is philosophical. The first is manifested in the pursuit of a career, whether it is the second season of business women building their own empire, Claire's yearning for Finland, the godmother's opening of an avant-garde "Sexhibition" or Fleabag and his friends opening a café. The personality independence brought about by economic independence makes the struggles in women's lives more modern and convincing, which is a metaphor for the public's expectations of modern women.
The second is the control of the body, and talk and selectivity have become the two constituent elements of modern women, which is undoubtedly positive. In the play, Fleabag somewhat blurs the boundaries of the right to use, leading to a moral decline (so much so that it cannot call itself a feminist).
Using a statue as an anchor in the blue ocean, Fleabag depicts the ultimate proposition of modern women: the awakening of subjectivity, and the freedom of choice that comes with it.
The statue that appeared in the first episode of the first season was modeled after Fleabag's mother, and the sculpture was of a headless kneeling nude woman. Fleabag stole it home in exchange for money, more like a pungent metaphorical satire. When she found out in the taxi that this perfect body resembled her own body, she smiled meaningfully.
The statue later became Claire's birthday present, and the second season was awarded as a trophy to a successful business woman, which led Fleabag to intersect with her, which led to a discussion about "female reconciliation".
The materialization of the statue, the beauty of being gazed upon, becomes a mirror, refracting the existence dilemmas of different women in different periods, constituting a group portrait of women, and obtaining transcendent condensation.
And just as business women have embraced "carnal statues" as a portrayal of their own success (lingering carnal judgment), irony has reached its peak. That is also the common dilemma faced by all minorities.
The perception of "Feminist" (feminist).
National Theater Live version
At the end of the second season, Fleabag carefully took out the statue and showed it to us, by which time we already knew that she had accepted herself calmly, no longer afraid and anxious.
As the 12 episodes go by, we see Fleabag's discourse diminished and more opaque, pushing the camera away in the last scene. When she walks away, we are no longer allowed to follow. When she was happier, we gradually realized that the show was also coming to an end. She had to escape from the audience, from the performance. Instead of uttering a word, the ending has a personal power.
"The nameless woman living in London, if any, is a shadow of you and me. When you get better, it's too late to say goodbye. ”
PS: Fleabag was named the eighth of the "100 Best TV Series of the 21st Century" by The Guardian, and won five awards at the 71st Emmy Awards, including the best drama series in the comedy category.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote, starred and produced in Fleabag and won best actress and screenwriter in a comedy at the 71st Emmy Awards.