Living a frivolous life and having a poetic warmth, "American Girl" has a lot of texture

"American Girl" is a film set in the beginning of SARS in 2003, the story takes place in Taiwan, but it is named after "American Girl", which in itself can make the audience have a certain curiosity about the work. It is about a girl who has lived in the United States since childhood, and after returning to Taiwan, she has all kinds of discomforts, interspersed with family and friendship.

The discussion of family films on the topic of family affection is eternal, and "American Girl" is no exception, but because this film adds cancer to the heroine, this kind of family affection is relatively heavy, but the film does not forcibly elevate the dimension of the work, but chooses to present the most real life as the starting point.

The protagonist in "American Girl" also lives a trivial life. Middle-aged people are still worried about work, family and material life, while children gradually find a way to make themselves comfortable in the process of rejection and having to adapt. Although the overall content of the film is relatively heavy, and even suffocating because of the non-stop quarrels, the work itself has a poetic warmth.

Compared with most family-themed works, "American Girl" has a sufficient texture. It looks like dog blood, but it really integrates the dog blood that belongs to life into the specific life situation, which is real and makes people feel substitution.

Cultural differences cause discomfort, and demands and gains are not equal

The film explained the background at the beginning, the heroine Wang Lili because of breast cancer, can not continue to stay in the United States, chose to return to Taiwan for treatment, for Wang Lili, who has lived in China for a long time, this trip is more like a return to her hometown. But for yu's two daughters who have lived in the United States since childhood, his hometown is his hometown, and his hometown is a less familiar hometown.

This unfamiliarity is first presented in the way of speech, and at the beginning of the film, the mother and daughter three talk in English throughout the first scene of the baggage, but at this time the mother tells the two daughters that they will talk about Chinese after seeing their father. This potential contradiction has been breeding from the beginning, dooming the communication between the two children and the father to be an obstacle.

Because of this language difference, the family is more like being in a completely different number of channels, the heroine and her husband can easily communicate with Chinese, but the eldest daughter is trying to speak in Chinese as much as possible, but also interspersed with English, and the younger daughter is more purely in English.

In addition to language problems, there is also discomfort caused by cultural differences, and in the American educational concept that advocates freedom and self, corporal punishment and stick education rarely occur. So when the eldest daughter enters school, especially in the best middle school, she is always uncomfortable with the constraints of not being so free.

The eldest daughter, Liang Fangyi, did not take the initiative to accept this change in life, which caused her to be passive in many cases, even if she made a new friend, she was also reminded by the other parents not to play with her children. After Liang Fangyi, who had a relatively good performance abroad, returned to China, she also felt the strong psychological discomfort brought by corporal punishment because her grades were too bad.

From the housing environment to the learning environment to the perception of her around her, Liang Fangyi instinctively isolated herself from others, who also labeled her as an American girl. Although Liang Fangyi did not act excessively, in the eyes of others, her discomfort was due to a potential sense of superiority.

Suffocating emotional stress comes from expressing love in the worst possible way

The direct reason why "American Girl" makes people feel depressed is that the heroine's family in the play always quarrels incessantly, and this quarrel is not limited to the father and mother, but also between the child and the child, or between the parent and the child, and the problems that cause the quarrel are diverse, not the same problem is argued back and forth.

It seems that for this family, the biggest problem is that the heroine has cancer, so the point that may trigger the emotional collapse is that she cannot afford the medical expenses or cannot be cured, but through the behavior and way everyone in this film behaves and speaks, their biggest problem comes from the emotional pressure of suffocation.

The heroine Wang Lili is a more typical Chinese mother, she always habitually uses the most vicious words to sting the hearts of others, after being diagnosed with cancer, she blames the cause of cancer on other people, or does not emphasize the worst outcome with a positive attitude, resulting in a family that feels depressed.

And Wang Lili's behavior, in the eyes of the eldest daughter Liang Fangyi, is that she is not good enough as a mother, and she can use a more positive way to alleviate the pressure brought by cancer, and she should live as well as possible. But the only thing she didn't think about was how to face Wang Lili's situation in a more positive way.

Through the film, when Wang Lili went to the hospital for chemotherapy, the doctor was applying gauze to her, although the camera only gave one side, but what she saw in Wang Lili's eyes was a kind of fear and worry, which even covered up the pain of her chemotherapy. Many times we tend to think that mothers are the strongest people, even in the face of illness, they tacitly acknowledge that they will be able to survive, but ignore that mothers are also an ordinary person, and there will be an instinctive fear of death. It's just that Wang Lili has transformed this fear and worry into a negative emotional output.

The reason why the husband and his wife have not seen each other for a long time, and there are not too many intimate actions, and they will also do something to their daughters when their emotions erupt, is also because the difficulties he faces are practical. The wife's treatment costs money, and the family needs to pay for a bigger house, but the industry he works in is sluggish, and he has to leave home, but the wife can't understand.

For the young Liang Fangyi, the practical difficulties she faces are all kinds of discomfort with her hometown life, and her desire to return to the United States is difficult to achieve, and what she sees in Liang Fangyi is more the rebellion of an adolescent girl.

But the family tacitly chose silence, did not put the difficulties out to solve together, but transformed the difficulties into a negative emotion, expecting others to understand things and do better, but because the other party could not meet their expectations, resulting in emotional collapse. In fact, everyone is reluctant to speak out about the problems they face, and they avoid their families worrying about themselves, but they choose to express love in the worst way.

In the film, the only one who does not have so many complicated emotions and can say her inner thoughts more directly is the little daughter who has not grown up, she knows the love of her parents for her sister, the love for herself, and also knows that her sister and herself also love her parents, this pure emotional expression is more worthy of our reflection when we are wrapped in emotional pressure.

With the "major events" as a facet, you can feel deeply without experiencing them

The life scenes presented in "American Girl", or the family conflicts that occur, can make most viewers have a sense of déjà vu, as if the life of this family is a true portrayal of their own family in reality. The source of this strong sense of substitution is not that there have been similar experiences with the characters in the play, but because the audience can find a sense of familiarity from some small details.

For the family in the film, the major events are cancer and the isolation of the young daughter suspected of SARS, which is a moment of life and death, and for the family, it is likely to be completely destroyed because of such a major event. But many people have not experienced such a time, behind such a major event, some of the details of life derived are the portrayal of most people's families.

During the SARS period, the younger daughter had different ideas about the parents because of cough and fever, and the father thought that it would be safer to take medicine at home, but the mother insisted on going to the hospital, and as a result, because the younger daughter was suspected of pneumonia to be isolated, the contradiction between the husband and wife ushered in a big outbreak.

When the mother always says something too stressful because of negative emotions, the eldest daughter vents her emotions to her mother but is slapped by the father, and the harmony of a family appearance often masks the contradictions accumulated for a long time. What is missing is a fuse, which is a relatively common phenomenon, and whether or not a major event occurs, it is possible to usher in an outbreak in this way.

However, this family conflict is not an insoluble problem between husband and wife, which is resolved by the united front when they educate their children. The problem between mother and daughter is not deep-rooted, at the end of the film, when the mother learns that her little daughter is just ordinary pneumonia, she takes her daughter home, the camera cuts from the perspective of the eldest daughter, she hears the voice and runs out of the door, which is also the force of family affection, so that the family can reconcile.

The setting of major events is added to the film, but as a facet, "American Girl" really wants us to see the true face of family, life, and family affection, which is why the setting of "American Girl" has the taste of dog blood, and even returning from the United States to their hometown, which is not the life experience that most people have, can still make people feel empathy.

"American Girl" presents us with too many contradictions from the perspective of the family, and also brings us a lot of negative energy, but with the development of the plot story, the problem has not been completely solved, but it has not forced HE, but it also makes people feel warm and completes the reconciliation at the end. And this kind of warmth comes from the spiritual sustenance brought to us by inseparable family affection.