The mother and daughter eventually reached a settlement
A warm group photo of a family of three
Xu Fan Xu Yajun plays a husband and wife
Yangcheng Evening News reporter Li Li
This year's Mid-Autumn Festival file may appear a box office dark horse. A film called "Everything About My Mother" has recently triggered a strong "tear-jerking" effect in test screenings around the world, and more film critics have compared it with this year's Spring Festival box office blockbuster "Hello, Li Huanying". It is worth mentioning that in addition to the theme of maternal love, there is also "death education", and such films such as "Get Out!" "Tumor Jun" and "Send You a Little Red Flower" have also achieved box office success in the past.
"Everything About My Mother" is directed by Zhao Tianyu, and Xu Fan, Zhang Jingyi, and Xu Yajun play a family of three in the film. In the creative process, Zhao Tianyu interviewed more than 40 pairs of mothers and daughters, and Xu Fan's strength starring made the mother in the film show the most authentic texture. The film will be officially released on September 19.
The real everyday life between mother and daughter
"When you were a child, you liked to sleep with your mother the most, and you always said, 'Your mother smells so good.'" "But I don't like it now!" The film's true presentation of the details of the mother-daughter relationship touched many viewers. One expects the child to still cling to himself as he did when he was a child, and the other is eager to break free of his mother's care and control over himself, which is the daily life of many Chinese mothers and daughters.
The film shows an ordinary Chinese family of three. The old couple lives in Qingdao, and the daughter chooses to drift north. Although my daughter often does not come home on holidays, my mother still prepares her favorite dishes early before the holidays. Her daughter's work and love affairs did not go well, so she temporarily decided to go home. My mother did not finish the physical examination and ran to the train station to pick up people happily, but when they met, they "disliked the second company": "The hair curtain covers the eyes, quickly tie up!" What do you wear in your eyes? Beauty pupils? Not beautiful at all! When he was finished, he happily took the suitcase and extended his other empty hand to his daughter: "Quick, hold it!" ”
In the daughter's view, the mother's love is somewhat "self-talking": it is not easy to go home to rest, the mother will open the curtains early in the morning to prevent people from sleeping; after saying countless times "enter the room and knock on the door first", the mother still wants to break in, and even forcibly requires the two to sleep together, because "you rarely come back, sleeping with the mother is the mother's privilege"; arranging blind dates for the daughter herself, and also asking the daughter to perform talent in front of a large number of relatives and friends... In this relationship, although the daughter stressed again and again that "you don't care about me anymore", the mother still managed her housework, managed her work, managed her love, managed her everything, and said with a straight face: "I am your mother!" I'm doing this for your own good! ”
"Suffocating love! The whole time I thought of my mother. At the early test screening in Guangzhou, a young female audience member said, "The daily details of this film are simply real enough to be 'outrageous'!" ”
Get close to the values of moms
But all the control and resistance between mother and daughter quietly changed after the hospital issued a diagnosis. Mom had cancer, and for years she had suffered in silence with discomfort and pain, and now the disease had progressed to an untreatable stage.
Many viewers who watched the test screening expressed their disapproval of this role: "Obviously, my husband is a doctor, and he can endure for so many years." But some viewers expressed understanding: "Many mothers put their families first and rank their needs last." In the film, the mother, who has been a geography teacher all her life, serves the children at school and returns home to take care of her mother-in-law with Alzheimer's disease for decades. The husband works in the hospital, because of a surgical accident left a knot, unwilling to return to the operating room; the daughter works as a choreographer in Beijing, always reporting good news and not worrying, but her mother can always see through her at a glance that she is actually not happy...
The mother in the film also has a younger brother who is not a weapon. Many years ago, his mother sent him to force drug rehabilitation, for which he sold his parents' old house, and then her brother took "you owe me" as a reason for his lack of vigor, and came to her for trouble every time he lost money in gambling. The daughter repeatedly suggested that her mother break off relations with her uncle, but her mother always replied: "He is my only brother!" ”
Is Mom a "Brother Demon" without a self? There are two plot points at the end of the film that answer this question. One is her brother came home to eat Chinese New Year's Eve meal, the sisters and brothers smiled at the dumplings and wept, a silent cry, and the mother's efforts over the years finally led to some kind of reconciliation; the other is that the daughter learned that her mother originally had her own dream, she was even admitted to the Antarctic scientific expedition team, but because she found out that she was pregnant, she finally chose to give up her dream and give birth to her daughter.
It is worth mentioning that the film does not blindly appreciate the mother's sacrifice spirit. At the end of the film, a passage of what the mother said to her daughter before she died: "This is my choice, but you are different, and my mother hopes that you can live the life you want." In this regard, an audience member who "does not accept but understands" the choice of his mother in the film said that he cried and swollen his eyes: "The values of each generation are inevitably different, and after watching this movie, I think I will understand my mother better." ”
Face death and live meaning
How humans face death is obviously a proposition heavier than maternal love. But in 2015, the summer release of "Get Out! "Tumor Jun" received 510 million yuan at the box office, and "Send You a Little Red Flower", which was released on December 31 last year, ended at the box office of 1.432 billion yuan, which made people see the effect of this genre on the box office. If you take into account the "bonus" of the mother's love theme, "Everything About My Mother" is difficult to have a staggering box office of "Hello, Li Huanying" of 5.413 billion yuan, or there is a chance to take a "long-term release, word-of-mouth victory" road with the theme and strength.
However, "All About My Mother" is still significantly different from the above works. For example, the film does not have the obvious comedic color of "Hello, Lee Huan Ying", in addition, it is also better than the fusion of the two-dimensional style of "Get Out!" "Tumor Jun" and "Send You a Little Red Flower" are more realistic. However, based on this, the film's discussion of the topic of "death education" is more direct and sharp.
In the film, when everyone around her is sad and uneasy, my mother is the most calm person. When she went to Beijing for medical treatment, she also brought her daughter a hometown specialty with a full truck trunk. When her daughter finally learned that she was terminally ill and cried and asked," "Why didn't you say it earlier," she smiled and replied, "What a big deal!" But when the young patient who called herself the "miracle of life" played by Zhang Xinyi died, the mother, who had always been optimistic and calm, finally showed her fear. The way for a family to overcome the fear of death and the pain of separation can only be faced together.
How to live meaning and how to face death are two sides of the same proposition - the latter is more frightening to middle-aged and elderly people, and the former is more confused by young people. "All About My Mother" also sharply shows the problem of "hollow people" through the conflict between mother and daughter. In the film, the mother found that the object of her daughter's bitter love actually had a wife and a daughter, and decided to let her daughter witness the truth with her own eyes, hoping to help her "get back on track". The daughter collapsed and revealed that in fact, she already knew that the other party had a husband. Mom was stunned: "You are not such a child! The daughter shouted, "That's how I am!" I just have to get by — emotionally, and at work. I don't like this job at all! The mother tried to understand her daughter: "So what do you like?" It's still too late for us to work together. But her daughter's answer broke her head again: "I don't know, I don't like anything." Can you stop having illusions about me..."
"Sometimes in the face of my energetic mother, I really feel that I am powerless and failing." Some female viewers said that this mother-daughter conflict is her "favorite in the whole film", "completely pointing out the fundamental difference between me and my mother - she, like the mother in the film, always likes to say, 'You are young, can't you live a little actively', but I always feel that I can't do anything." At the end of the film, my mother encourages her daughter to "don't do unpleasant work, it doesn't matter", but in reality my mother will definitely not agree to my resignation. But I thought, maybe I shouldn't wait for her guidance, I need to find my own answers. ”
Source: Yangcheng Evening News