Your circle | abandon the costume Mary Sue, Jia Jingwen Lin Xinru finally has acting skills again

Text | Hao Qi

Edit | Lu Leng

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The third season of "The First Light" ended with good results. In fact, in November 2021, the first season of "The First Light" began broadcasting, and it reached the top of the Netflix hit list in three days.

The total producer of this 250 million Taiwan dollar series is Lin Xinru. The story begins with a murder case in 1988, drawing out the female group portraits of a Japanese tavern in the 80s: some people are old and depressed, they are in debt, some people have been imprisoned for attempted murder, some people are desperate to sell drugs for love... In the wind and moon field, love and hate are entangled, women support each other and envy each other, secretly resentful and suffering together. Along with the suspense in the play, the complex human nature is unveiled in a stripped-out way.

Lin Xinru plays his mother Sangluo Yunong, selling ambiguity in the tavern, both wind and dust and love, and finally no longer the pure love heroine who used to stare at innocent eyes. Netizens "praised Lin Production", "After giving birth to a child and being silent for a few years, Lin Xinru finally figured it out, gave up playing the Mary Sue Halo heroine's tragic life after the rise of his love for me and he also loved my dog blood plot, and began to catch up in 40+ Chinese actresses!" Someone wrote.

Also "catching up" is Jia Jingwen. After the age of 45, Jia Jingwen ushered in a new career peak. Two critically acclaimed works have been released in quick succession. When the TV series "The Distance Between Us and Evil" first came to her, she couldn't believe it: "It turns out that someone thought I could play such a role, and I had that possibility." She plays the tv station's deputy director, Song Joan, whose son was killed in indiscriminate killings. Her life has since fallen into darkness, relying on alcohol to escape her pain. "With Evil" is very successful, with the role of Song Qiao'an, Jia Jingwen debuted nearly 30 years ago, winning the Golden Bell Award for the first time. There is a scene in the play, which was cut out by netizens alone and repeatedly disseminated, as evidence of Jia Jingwen's acting skills: she confronted the perpetrator's family, and her emotions went from cold questioning to collapse, and a tear fell accurately. It is not a cry, it is restraint, forbearance, repression, the so-called layered performance.

Then there is "Waterfall" that helped her win the film queen, Jia Jingwen played a mother with a mental disorder, delusions, hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, and disordered thinking. In close-up, she is exhausted, broken, in a trance, swaying on the verge of collapse. After watching it, Little S's eldest daughter told her mother to tell this aunt who often came to the house: "She is really good at acting, I like her so much, this play is really good, I am now a fan of her." ”

In the eyes of the public, these two "most profitable" actresses have ushered in the second spring of their careers after returning to Taiwan to develop.

If they stay in the inner entertainment, such a "possibility" may be difficult to fall on them. In the past few years, Lin Xinru has filmed 4 plays a year. Jia Jingwen is more exaggerated, once filmed 16 films in two years, tired to wear makeup and sleep.

At that time, they repeatedly appeared in costume dramas, and their main task was to contribute beauty. Jia Jingwen is Zhao Min in "Yitian Slaughtering Dragon", Wu Meiniang in "Supreme Red Face", and Nian Nujiao in "Great Han Tianzi", either eccentric or tender, all of which are unforgettable confidants of Red Face.

"Supreme Red Face"

As for Lin Xinru, after the two classic Qiongyao opera roles of Ziwei and Ruping, she seems to be frozen in the template of dignified and intelligent women with great love. She tried to transform production in 2009, and the path is still single. In 2011, she produced and starred in The Princess, a standard Mary Sue costume drama. In 2016, she produced "The Long Song of beautiful rivers and mountains" to go down the road to Mary Sue. In the play, the 40-year-old plays the teenage girl "Yin Lihua", men love her, women are jealous of her, and she, simple, kind, and has great love. Unfortunately, the audience has long been tired of the aesthetic fatigue of such images, coupled with the beauty's age, the depthless "tenderness" makes the screen full of untimely embarrassment.

Jia Jingwen's later story, everyone knows. After the well-known divorce, she returned to Taiwan, and in order to obtain custody of her eldest daughter, Wu Tongmei, she was required to impose harsh conditions: she could not leave her daughter for more than five days. This, of course, limited her acting career. In those years, she used her scattered time to still make cameo appearances in costume dramas and participate in some variety shows, but there were no impressive roles. In an interview with People magazine, Jia Jingwen said: "After the divorce, I flew back and forth many times, some issues still need to be negotiated, and some scenes were filmed in the middle, which were not remembered by everyone, and even I myself am about to forget now." ”

Lin Xinru's career choice is also related to marriage and children. In 2016, she married Huo Jianhua and gave birth to her daughter Little Dolphin the following year. In 2021, Lin Xinru Studio wrote off Weibo, and the outside world speculated that she officially abandoned the internal entertainment market.

They also had to go. Over the years, film and television dramas have tended to use local actresses. But even local actresses are complaining that there are no scenes to shoot after entering middle age. Either play the role of a mother anxious about education and buying a house in a family drama, who is not eligible for love after the age of 35; or continue to pretend to be a girl in an ancient puppet drama - this is the most attractive and can lay a business foundation for the career. There are also so-called big female protagonists, but they are often suspended female presidents in the suspension plot, strong in the outside, the work is solved by beauty and men, and still live a life of powder.

At this time, Taiwan dramas are reviving, to some extent, also thanks to the capital intervention of streaming media. The platform is looking for well-made local themes, and Taiwanese dramas can bid farewell to the dreamy love narrative of the past prince and princess and enter a more diversified narrative. "Our Distance from Evil" focuses on the chain reaction caused by crime, explores the human rights of perpetrators, and tries to eliminate prejudice; "Want to See You" shows depression, school bullying and the impact of the original family on a person; Lin Xinru's other work "Who is the Victim", which focuses on marginalized people who have been expelled by social forces, the drama's Douban score is 8.0, and Lin Xinru plays a yellow-faced, wrinkled Indonesian cleaner in it.

Who's the Victim?

Lin Xinru, who left the Mary Sue costume heroine, finally found the content that suited him. "Those Things They Started" focuses on female entrepreneurs, and "Lost Andy" revolves around gender issues and illegal relocation.

The theme of the new Taiwan drama is so wide that everything can be described, and any group of people can become the protagonist. The protagonist can be Mama Sang, who can not only be proficient in sophistication, but also be trapped by love, can be jealous, and can have complex emotions; there can be all kinds of mothers, mothers can not be anxious about buying a house, can be fragile, can be insane, can fall in love; criminals can also be described in detail before being covered in coffins; older single women, do not have to hang all the way in Taipei, can return to Tainan Town, warm and trivial life is also humorous and good-looking - like in "The Cultivation of Ordinary Women".

The Distance Between Us and Evil

The familiar Taiwanese opera actors of the past have resurfaced in this revival. There are many in "The Beginning of the Lantern": Huo Jianhua, Zheng Yuanchang, Yang Youning, as well as Jia Jingwen's husband Xiu Jiekai, the protagonist of "Queen of Defeated Dogs", Yang Jinhua, who is familiar with the face in the mainland variety show "Mars Intelligence Bureau", and Feng Xiaoyue, who once starred in "Small Times".

Such a series naturally gives the actors more space. Jia Jingwen also finally got rid of the state of encountering fans who were still talking about "The Dragon Slayer in the Sky" and "Supreme Red Face", "From the beginning of "The Distance Between Us and Evil", I feel that I have been seen again. She feels that her life has more possibilities after the ups and downs, and the richer film and television themes give these possibilities opportunities, "It seems that there are so many stories in life, because of my role and fall leaves." 」 ”

(Source: Tencent News)

* Some images are from the internet