The film "Floating City Mystery" continues Lou Ye's consistent style, there is no bustling city, gray sky, endless rain, the shaking of handheld photography, intractable emotional entanglement, which is still fully expressed in "Floating City Mystery". The difference is that "The Mystery of the Floating City" is closer to the family life and married life of modern Chinese society, in other words, more realistic.
Lou Ye's films always pierce people's hearts and the subtleties of society, the "motor" of love in "Suzhou Creek"; the intricate social changes in "Summer Palace" reflect people's helplessness and helplessness; and the confusion of love and sex presented in "The Mystery of the Floating City" and the ups and downs of various social relations make people deeply feel the acne behind the glitz of the city and the secrets of human nature in the dull atmosphere.
The film's story is set in Wuhan, a mysterious city where torrential rain is often poured, and the key nodes that promote the development of the story are accompanied by the "heavy rain" of Jiangcheng, and then I don't know how many restless cities are obliterated by the floating fog over Jiangcheng washed by the torrential rain. The opening crazy drag racing scene with the soundtrack of "Ode to Joy" is extremely ironic; the whole film is full of hand-cranked shots without any embellishments, and the rough particles of reality are shook out, and the reality is naked.
The theme of the film comes from a post from netizens that the director saw on the Internet, "Look at How I Tear The Dirty Boy Three", which greatly reflects the truth that "art comes from life but is higher than life". The film begins with mosquitoes, a girl killed in a car accident, and brings out the true face of a family that originally looked happy.
Qiao Yongzhao is a successful person in the eyes of outsiders, but in the low place of the heart, he is a representative of a "mean man", and people are often like this, and the yin and yang worlds are gathered together. He is constantly looking for new women, and the mosquito is one of his prey, his relationship with the mosquito is a one-night stand, the dragonfly is a little water, only sexual venting and relief but no love warmth and romance. If he just has such a derailment like a mosquito, the story may not be so simple, and the strange thing is that he is still constantly looking, as director Lou Ye said, Qiao Yongzhao does not really love the woman, or the woman who really loves has not yet appeared.
Lu Jie, played by Hao Lei, as Qiao Yongzhao's wife, is also a successful woman, with a family and a daughter An An and a career. The appearance of the kindergarten child Yuhang's mother made her suddenly feel that her family was drifting, and Sanqi, as Yuhang's mother, kept telling her husband's infidelity in front of Lu Jie and invited Lu Jie to look through the window of the restaurant. At this moment, time froze, because Lu Jie's husband was Sanqi's husband, and they had the same husband: Qiao Yongzhao. And Qiao Yongzhao is constantly circling between the two women and the two children, and is still looking for new women outside of these two women.
In fact, in the values of most people in modern society, the hero has all the elements that the so-called "success" label should have. And when he was torn between two fixed women and countless one-night stands, he slowly began to show flaws, and a small gap was strong enough to crush his original good life. There is no impermeable wall, and all this always gets.
The little four in the movie is a very sad character. First of all, we don't know whether she is actively acting as a primary four or passive as a primary four, if it is passive, it is really sad, not only labeled as a primary four, but also put her life on the line. The case was private, compensating the family of the deceased for money and real estate, and the children of the rich family were rampant at the police.
All of these seem to be exaggerated, in fact, art comes from life, and often life is more exaggerated than the plot of the movie. Not only this era, but also the past, which era has not had dirty things, dirty people and power and money transactions. It's just the end of the movie, and the case is finally broken, giving the audience hope. In fact, life is like this, there is beauty and ugliness, mainly depending on which side you choose, whether it is facing the sun, or hiding in the corner, depending on yourself.
Through some works such as "Suzhou Creek" and "Spring Breeze Drunken Night", it can be clearly found that Lou Ye's works emphasize the performance of people's living conditions all the time, confused, negative, painful, extreme, depressed... Basically all of them are occupied by negative and pessimistic emotions, through the creation of oppressive realistic lens language and scene atmosphere to amplify it, capture the individual's living state from a certain tangled and complex relationship, and implicitly and objectively explore the main reasons and causes and effects behind it. It is the divine horse-like social environment that slowly and invisibly forces "us" to go to the purgatory of emotions and welcome the arrival of tragedy.
Compared with previous works, the plot trend and character relationship of "Floating City Mystery" are unusually clear and clear, and Lou Ye is no longer only obscurely obsessed with the expression of emotions this time, but focuses on various human shortcomings, and the bright and upright peeks into the true face of society under layers of strict surveillance and control.
It can be said that in "The Mystery of the Floating City", Lou Ye gave each character a certain extreme human trait, Qiao Yongzhao, who indulged in the torrent of 'desire' and could not extricate himself, Sangqi, who lived in a snail house and was ravaged and worked hard, and Sangqi, who was extremely 'dependent' on Qiao Yongzhao, out of 'jealousy', lu Jie, who lost his mind in an instant from a happy full-time wife and went astray, Xiao Si, who died of death because of "very stupid and naïve", and endless 'greed' prompted the final innocent beggar to die tragically under the shovel.
Of course, at some times or in some ways these seemingly negative human characteristics may also have a positive side, there are also a large number of subjective factors, such as innate nature and unchangeable genes, but often more importantly depends on the living environment, influenced by bad habits, burdened with heavy pressure, afraid of enduring loneliness under fragile emotions, selfishness and hypocrisy have become the main objects of belief, and the pursuit of fame and profit and compromise have become the basic principles of survival. These are often hidden under the mask of people's seemingly happy lives and social hypocrisy.