Someone falls in love with you if you say, "The sky is white." He would say, "But the clouds are black."
This is a confessional love letter written by a homeless man with nothing to his sweetheart. What exactly is love? In the eyes of the poet, love is the muse of inspiration, in the eyes of the painter love is a unique color, in the eyes of ordinary people love is the heartbeat after three meals a day, but in the eyes of the madman love is life, is all the light and heat of life.
Released in 1991, "Lovers of The New Bridge" uses a different perspective to explain to us a deformed and romantic love story. The story tells that Michelle, a rich woman from a military family, suffers from an eye disease and is abandoned by her first love boyfriend, and in despair, she takes a picture clip and a paint box and begins to wander with her cat. Passing through the new bridge, she met alex the tramp on the street, and painted his painful appearance, not wanting Alex to fall in love with her, the two had a romantic and heart-wrenching love story.
This film does not continue the conventional motifs of romance films - Cinderella, love road difficulty, love triangle three. Instead, romantic love is placed in a cruel reality, and the crazy expression of love is vividly expressed through two contrasting characters. The film, which took three years and is known as "God's Gift", won the European Film Award for Best Actress, Best Cinematography and Best Editing in 1992.
The film was directed by Leo. Directed by Carax, with a strong "neo-Baroque" style, the director combines romantic love with cruel reality to present the audience with a different love film. Starting from the "Neo-Baroque", this article analyzes the aesthetic characteristics of the "Neo-Baroque" presented by the film, explores the theme of the film, and interprets the deep meaning behind this European classic romance film.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the origin of "Neo-Baroque" and the application of aesthetic characteristics</h1>
(1) "Neo-Baroque": A wave of postmodern cinema that emerged in the 1980s
In the early 1980s, Luc Besson, along with Jean-Jacques Benécés and Carla Kers, pioneers of young French directors, were called "BBC" or "Neo-Baroque" by critics in the first letter of their surnames. Strictly speaking, this is not a true film genre. Because they are artistically independent of each other, but in some places the three have similarities.
They are all growing up and the era of image popularization, unlike the previous directors who learned stories through books, they learned through pictures. In their view, the picture and vision are better than the words, and the beauty of the picture is more important in their films, in short, the visual beauty is more important than the storyline for them.
They captivate the audience with exquisitely crafted and perfect pictures, and use fashion, high-tech equipment and the usual techniques of advertising photography to enrich and decorate the storyline in the film. The film as a whole presents the characteristics of fast pace, complex technique, and traditional plot reconstruction.
Leo. As a representative of the "Neo-Baroque School", the plot of "Lovers of the New Bridge" is simple, but the shape and composition are unexpected, creating a visual feast for the audience.
(2) Cinematic aesthetics: The aesthetic style of "Neo-Baroque" is vividly expressed
The "neo-Baroque" aesthetic of "Lovers of The New Bridge" is very obvious: the director uses a lens language full of personality to express the love story of the intestines.
First of all, the documentary style and modeling aesthetics in the film are integrated with each other, and the two complement each other.
The story takes place in Paris Neue Pont, the gathering place of the homeless, the new bridge presented in the movie, the environment is all kinds of dirty, everywhere are unclothed homeless people, as if you can smell the sour smell of their bodies across the screen. When the male protagonist Alex appeared, the director used a unique focusing method, through the covered shot + detail close-up, so that the audience saw a drunken, ragged, ugly face of the tramp; while the heroine Michelle's appearance used the long-range - close-up - local details - long-range way to portray a decadent, dim, unkempt character image.
In addition, the director also uses a large number of spatial shots to extend and supplement the storyline. In the film, outdoor spaces such as new bridges, Paris streets, parks, and the sea continue to appear, and the hero and heroine gradually fall in love in such an environment. These spaces all have one thing in common – wide, and the director uses the sculpting of these external spaces to tell the audience that the relationship is free, but at the same time it does not need to be elaborate, just like these places can belong to anyone, but not completely belong to anyone.
Secondly, in the film, the director also deliberately uses techniques to create a sense of form.
When Alex performs the fire-breathing performance, the long shots and short shots are intertwined, supplemented by the post-frame extraction process to give the audience a sense of visual jumping, and when expressing the inner fanaticism of the heroine Michelle, he uses the montage technique to shoot the plane flying over the sky, and the hero and heroine also use collage techniques to express their madness, happiness, ease and loneliness after the carnival when they swim in the Seine River at night. There are many similar sound and picture language designs in the film, through these sounds and pictures the audience can more intuitively feel the spiritual world of the hero and heroine.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the main theme of the film: love wrapped in reality is ultimately a moon in the mirror, and the best love is enough to love yourself. </h1>
Dante once said: Love is the sublimation of the human heart's longing to the state of perfection.
Love should be romantic, but "Lovers of The New Bridge" made me see the "cruelty" of love. Their love begins with an undignified acquaintance, and it has been as brilliant as fireworks, but in the end they bow their heads in front of reality and go parting. In the film, the director portrays two plump characters through completely different behaviors and language characteristics, and approaches the theme of the film step by step.
(1) Alex's series of obsessive courtship behaviors point out the splendor of love
Alex's love for Michelle stemmed from the painting Michelle painted for him, and Michelle's work allowed him to really see himself for the first time. The lonely tramp felt understanding in Michelle's paintings, and this spiritual comfort made him sink. In order to love Michelle, in order to keep his beloved girl, he has taken a series of incomprehensible crazy behaviors:
While pursuing Michelle, he steals fish from the wet market to grill for her to eat, steals clean underwear for her, picks up the radio from the garbage heap to relieve her boredom... Fearing the loss of Michelle, he chases Michelle's ex-boyfriend from the subway, throws the money they stole to change the status quo into the river, sets fire to posters looking for Michelle, and relieves the pain in his heart by self-harming whenever he feels that Michelle is leaving.
Before I met you, I was lonely, and after knowing you, I was lonely. - Ge Fei
In Alex's world, emotion is the pillar of his life, the body and soul outside of emotion are dispensable, and the director shows us the theme of the film through Alex's crazy behavior - repressed, crazy, self-destructive love. Alex is both simple and deep, both crazy and sober in his heart, telling the audience that this is a love that burns with life.
(2) Michelle's return to sanity confirms the cruelty of real life
Unlike Alex, Michelle's spirit world is never all about love. Michelle's self-exile is not because of love, but because of the eye disease that bothers her, and this short-term frustration makes her decide to let herself wander and paint the world in her eyes. During this time she meets Alex, who loves her deeply, and two frustrated souls are attracted to each other and fall in love.
However, when Michelle learned that her eyes could be healed, she resolutely chose to abandon Alex and return to her original life. Two years later, Michelle went to visit Alex in prison under the "Drive of Dreams", if she loved deeply, how could she ignore it for two years? Confront alex and ask, "Why do you want to forget me?" She was speechless. After visiting Alex, Michelle returns to the doctor's house and opens the door to call her cat, hinting at the fact that Michelle has a new relationship.
In this relationship, Michelle initially went to Alex's arms because of her sinking and exile, and when she had the opportunity to return to normal life, she chose to give up this love in the dust. One of them is tortured in a cold prison, and the other is living in high society, and this is the reality. Without the wind and snow, identity, status, and personality determine the ultimate direction of love, even if they choose to wander in the end, it is just the tragedy of the past that has been staged again.
Modern society is full of materialism, material, status, and class have become the premise of the development of love, romantic and eternal love has become the moon in the mirror, how can we obtain pure love in such a context. "Lovers of The New Bridge" tells us that the best love is to cross each other's inner loneliness and despair, transcend identity and status to give the best self to each other, do not pursue the short-term splendor of fireworks, and the love of the long stream can be eternal.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > "Lovers of The New Bridge" is not only a desire for love, but also a yearning for freedom</h1>
Directed by Leo. Carax said: "I have only one thought, to tell a love without makeup, without a phone, without a bedroom, a state of pure, swift love. ...... Some people, with nothing, are at the age of love and find that this seems to be a strange virus that devours the body and mind. ”
This is his yearning for freedom, pure love, the mountain of reality suppresses the human heart, shackles our freedom, through Michelle in the film we see the power of freedom again.
Michelle gains a short period of freedom in New Bridge, she does not need to be bound by reality and morality, New Bridge and Alex are her tools to relieve loneliness and escape from reality, thinking that every day she lives is the last day, she chooses to sink, choose to leave the constraints of the world free life. Freedom is not a tool of religious or political domination, but a belief in the heart of the individual. Therefore, when Michelle was looking at the Louvre in the movie, she went straight through the famous painting "Freedom Leads the People" and chose Rembrandt's self-portrait.
The director uses this detail to depict his desire to reveal his personal freedom, the fireworks on the new bridge, the Seine At night, the rough sea, these external spaces are portrayed to make us smell of freedom. The French Revolution advocated that if citizens are not free, they will be forced to be free. But through the film, we can see that what citizens desire is not passive freedom in the concept of the state, but subjective freedom from the heart, the unity of body and mind.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > written at the end</h1>
In Lovers of The New Bridge, Leo. Carax blends the "Neo-Baroque" aesthetic with the documentary style, allowing us to see the sparkling waters of the Seine at night, the colorful neon lights of the streets of Paris, and the dazzling fireworks on Christmas Eve. In these poetic scenes, two lonely and longing hearts for freedom and understanding are close to each other.
"Wake up, Paris!" This is Michelle's cry and the cry of the movie, the constant appearance of red, white and blue in the movie is the symbol of France, tanks, planes, infantry represent the revolution and politics of France, and the crazy, romantic, self-destructive love of Alex and Michelle seems insignificant in the social environment.
"Wake up" is the end of their love, but also the director's cry to the audience, the most free and urgent desire! The dream is over, the new bridge has been repaired, love has returned to reality, and the road to freedom is still long.
This is the meaning of the times behind "Lovers of The New Bridge".