When the words of youth, campus, love and so on collide together, the audience can not avoid thinking of the handsome and beautiful women vigorous emotional collision, and in this film, love seems to be a slow and ethereal ambiguous atmosphere, is implicit in the lines, expressions of the like, the plot of "True Heart Half Solution" as its name, is the "juggling the pipa half covered" The vague feeling makes it have a style.
Director Wu Siwei showed a very strong personal style and skills in her debut film "Face", which caused a great response in the United States, and later many films showing Asian life have its shadow.
"Face" has a certain similarity with the more famous film Ang Lee's "Wedding Banquet", which shows the audience the director's thorough understanding and reflection on the life of the Asian community and the way of doing things. In "True Heart Half Solution", this delicate way of expression is continued, but it is more relaxed in expression, of course, this is also related to the jumping color of youth films.
Alichu, a Chinese girl, immigrated to the United States with her father at the age of 5 and went to live in the small town of Squamish. Chu's father, who received his ph.D. in China, was depressed in the United States, worked as a manager at a small town station, and because of his immigrant status and weak English proficiency, his path to upward promotion was almost blocked, coupled with the grief of the middle-aged widow, the father figure in the movie was always monotonously watching black-and-white movies in front of the old-fashioned TV set, eating simple junk food, and his face could not see sadness and joy except for the vicissitudes left by the years. He was in a state of self-abandonment for his life and was reluctant to talk to people.
But the girl Ellie doesn't want to be trapped in the town, she is the smartest and most talented student in the class, she excels in philosophy class, and she is also a professional essay ghostwriter "gunner", and the teacher jokes that she can interpret Plato from seven different angles. This talent for writing is discovered by the boy Paul, who wants to pursue the beautiful girl Esther and asks Ellie to help him write a love letter.
But what he didn't know was that Ellie also had a crush on Esther in her heart. Ellie originally wanted to refuse the invitation to write a love letter, but because this "job" could solve her temporary financial difficulties, she agreed to it, and this love letter also became the beginning of a love story, and the bond between the three people has been deep since then.
Ellie not only became Paul's love letter ghostwriting expert, but also undertook a series of business such as texting on behalf of Paul, she helped Paul and Esther to think about the content of the conversation and the way to deal with problems before paul and Esther met, and even listed the outline to help him suddenly tutor literary knowledge points, which can be described as a comprehensive help teaching.
In the midst of this exchange, Paul gradually found himself in love with the smart, hard-working girl, and the understanding between the two deepened little by little, they played table tennis together, tasted food made by Paul's ancestral secret recipe, and exchanged views on "love" at the station at night.
But this kind of "ghostwriting" will always be discovered one day, and it is never Paul and Esther who understand each other, and after the discovery of such a relationship, the balance of the delicate relationship between the three is broken, but it also directly contributes to their accurate judgment of where their "true heart" is.
The film wants to show the film's exploration of "what is love", but it seems to skip the stage of what is why and directly tell you what to do, to break through the bold idea began to become dominant, which is why Esther decided to go to art school, and Alichu planned to go to Iowa to go to college, they did not play the theme of love at the turning point of life, but chose to let go of their hands to do what they wanted to do, as for the relationship between the two, it is not too late to continue after a few years.
This kind of love movie that does not give results seems to have not walked the usual path, obviously the whole article is love, but it swings at the end, leaving a more meaningful ending, perhaps in a few years, Ellie will return to Squamish to reconnect with Esther, perhaps they will each have a new life, new friends, new confidants, and find their own soul habitat in philosophy and art, which can be sublimated in the imagination of the audience's different understandings.
Unlike many other films with the theme of "same-sex love", "True Heart Half Solution" does not focus on the self-identification of sexual orientation, does not overly tangle the painful self-acceptance process, but is completely simple and simple campus love, in which the expression of love has two completely different forms - one is full of passionate pursuit, and the other is the introvertedness of the ruler.
Boy Paul is a healthy, typical sunny boy, not good at words but very emotional, in the beginning of the want to chase Esther with all his strength to chase, although there is no way to write beautiful words, but clumsy emojis and nowhere to put the tension when meeting make this image more cute, he thinks of romance is to expose all the mind, regardless of exaggeration.
And Ellie regards the process of writing letters as a step in love, heating up emotions in talking about literature and art, talking about ideals and herself, and liking is not a superficial pleasure, but a collision and resonance of the soul. She is very delicate about her emotional experience, and she is also very careful, wrapping her identity in warm words.
Esther is more like a combination of the two, she is one of the most popular students in the school, her behavior is in the spotlight, and she has a self-righteous boyfriend, but she does not enjoy a noisy life, but holds a dream of art and a love of literature, and spends a lot of time studying. She is the daughter of a well-respected town priest, but she has never fully integrated into the life of this town, and has even wavered and doubted her faith, and is not the perfect goddess expected.
But it is precisely this kind of image portrayal that is more in line with our imagination and reality of adolescent love, there is no utilitarian society to bring economic and status considerations, there is no tired dog blood tearing plot and deliberately made blood boiling look, their helplessness and caution, marginalization in friends and club activities and the sense of cowardice in a strange environment, are like ordinary audiences in high school, so that the love letters are left in the cabinet, The embarrassment of talking about gossip with friends but not being able to hold back a word in front of the person you like can only say that it is too real.
In the movie, the most moving content is probably the clip of Ellie and Esther doing doodles and communicating on the wall, in which they say that they should use the pen to draw the boldest pattern of the five strokes, and leave a message for each other on the wall, "challenging" each other.
From a restrained horizontal line at the beginning to the white paint that covers the entire wall, to the yellow embellishment and the final flying goddess image, they leave their understanding of the power of youth imagination on the wall, and boldly break through the shackles they have added to themselves - the image of a well-behaved child or the eternal quiet school bully.
Ironically, the graffiti on the walls was completely erased with gray paint after being discovered by the townspeople, leaving no trace, as if it were a mockery of the adult world, a lifeless chunk of color, no innovation and no passion.
But even so, the two established a close relationship of "doodling together and letting go of themselves together" without ever meeting each other, after which they became friends on a spiritual level and talked about everything. The bold approach here is also an opportunity for Esther to realize her artistic dreams, she sees that passionate painting is beautiful, a direction worth her sacrifice, and an important turning point that Ellie inspires her at key moments.
This is perhaps one of the best youth romance films I have ever seen, Paul, Esther, and Ellie form a stable triangle, just as the movie says that "if the triangle is less than one side, it will become a corner", they inspire each other's beauty and confidence in each other's personality, and let each other recognize the appearance of love. At the end of the film, when Ellie embarks on the road to study in a distant place, Paul chases the train that is far away, knowing that it is impossible to catch up or try to keep himself in the window shadow longer, at this time, Ellie will no longer feel that he is a fool who is blindly impulsive in love.