◎ City
Chihiro is "busy"
"Miss Chihiro" is not lacking in healing effects at first glance: Chihiro, a former custom shop lady played by Jun Muraka, comes to work in a bento shop in a seaside town, her makeup is delicate, her skin can be blown and broken, she does not have the tired vicissitudes or dust that sex workers often have, and even does not hide her experience as a young lady, offering the sweetest smile to everyone, including the obsessed male diners, and occasionally offering sexual services.
I don't know where she has so much time and energy outside of work, here she takes in the homeless old man and buries his body after he collapses on the street; Over there, she wants to comfort a female high school student who feels suffocated in a depressed family; It is also necessary to act as a "guardian" for the naughty boy who is unable to take care of the single mother at work; and sharing the joy of reading comics with a girl who was thrown out of the house by her parents; Of course, from time to time, I have to go to the hospital to visit the lady of the bento shop who suffers from eye diseases; At the same time, he works as a psychological counselor for a former custom shop colleague who was cheated out of money... I really want to shout to the director: "Enough, even if you want to show that the 'dust' woman also has a kind and pure soul, you don't have to be filmed as a living bodhisattva who rescues suffering and rescues suffering, okay?" ”
The group image disappears
"Miss Chihiro" is a new hit film cooperated by Japanese popular director Riya Imaizumi and Netflix. Riya Imaizumi, along with Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Songmi Miyake, and Tetsuya Makikoya, were all contemporaneous directors born in the second half of the 70s or the first half of the 80s, and each of them made extraordinary moves, setting off a new wave for the dull Hikage with new methods or new styles. Japanese film critic Shigehiko Hasumi pointed out that "due to the rise of their generation of directors, Japanese cinema entered the third golden period (the first period for Yasujiro Ozu before the war and the second period for Nagisa Oshima after the war." "Toshiya Imaizumi is characterized by his ability to shape group portraits (usually young men and women), through the interaction of different characters in a specific space or environment, presenting the complex and changeable self and cynical nihilistic mind of contemporary people. For example, his early work "Spring Sleep Silent Tea" depicts the erotic entanglement of 6 pairs of 12 men and women; "What is Love" uses the unrequited love experience of the woman Yukino Kishii to bring out the emotional intersection and gap of 5 men and women; "On the Street" also captures the turbulent life and emotional form of young people in Shimokitazawa with an emotional arrangement and combination pattern similar to "Spring Sleep Silent Tea".
This time, "Miss Chihiro" also uses the person of Chihiro to connect seven pairs of characters, but because the popular star Jun Murakata plays Chihiro, it can only make her a "big heroine", so that the director's group portrait character portrayal completely collapses - the characters who interact with Chihiro no longer have their own unique growth lines, and they cannot interweave complex and diverse life and emotional worlds, but can only strengthen the drama of Chihiro's transformation from a prostitute to a saint. In this way, other characters are somewhat reduced to embellishments, making the entire film almost reduced to a large-scale show with a village frame pure and self-appreciating.
Ten levels of filters
"Miss Chihiro" is a manga work, and it uses the custom industry as a gimmick, so it lacks the local nature of the close integration of people and places in Imaizumi Riya's previous works, and there is an awkward sense of suspension. The first half of the film is like a copy of Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Sea Street Diary", fresh and soft as a postcard; The second half is like a copy of "The Thief Family", and the process of connecting Chihiro with a person in a seaside town is almost like rebuilding a makeshift family - this is most evident in a scene where everyone eats together on the roof.
Riya Imaizumi and Hirokazu Kore-eda served as co-directors of the drama "Jun Arimura's Break", but I don't know if this is the reason that Imaizumi was invisibly influenced by Koeda, making "Miss Chihiro" lose the aura of Imaizumi's previous work, and become a mediocre work like the films made by Koeda in recent years.
It is worth exploring here the character of Chihiro, who is shown as a virgin-like character who burns herself to give to others, and is nothing more than the imagination of the creator (the original author and director of the manga) full of male gaze. In the film, Chihiro soothes and takes care of the marginal and weak like a saint, the reason for this, in addition to her kindness and purity by nature, may also be because she has been treated gently by the first generation of Chihiro, the sex worker of the custom shop, the manager of the custom shop and the bento shop, so she is also gentle to others and becomes a light that warms others.
What is interesting is the film's portrayal of the owner of the custom shop. This supposedly dishonorable pimp is shown in the film as a gentle and courteous and well-intentioned person, and it is Megumi Yanagita, who has no "sexual" interest in Chihiro, the number one in the store, and allows Chihiro to come and go freely. As soon as Chihiro resigned, he followed suit and closed the shop, becoming an old man who raised goldfish. Later, when he met Chihiro, he still cared for her, so that Chihiro, a former custom girl, wanted to recognize this former pimps as his father. No matter how "human" the director portrayed this pimp earlier, it is still difficult not to feel creepy as an audience to see the film beautify the custom industry and its practitioners with a ten-level filter.
Male gaze
This can't help but remind people of the same practice that director Hirokazu Kore-eda did in the Japanese drama "The Cook of the Maiki House" a while ago. According to writer Moyin, it was Kore-eda's Japanese drama "The Chef of the Maiko House" that Kore-eda expressed the world of Maikikan as a warm world full of friendship, ideals, and not family like family between girls who practice art. The play infuriated a former maiki, who tweeted, "Such a world does not exist!" Koeda posted on Twitter arguing that there had been a perspective on how geisha were abused or hurt like Kenji Mizoguchi's Gion Sisters and Naruse Kio's Wanderings, and that he wanted to express the beauty and tenacity of maiko from a new perspective.
The sixth episode of "The Chef of the Maiko House" focuses on the first love of a kabuki boss and a maiko kan mother. Ironically, however, in 2002, a real-world kabuki boss and a 19-year-old maiko were photographed entering and leaving a hotel, and the scene was so ugly and uproar. The beautification of the episode highlights the filth and darkness of reality. The producer and director of "The Chef of the Maiko House", the original author of the manga "Miss Chihiro" (Hiroyuki Yasuda) and the director are all men—and the glorified depictions of maiko and the custom industry in their works reveal the gaze of masculinity that has long been internalized into their unconscious patriarchal gaze.
Of course, it is undeniable that the director (and manga author) of "Miss Chihiro" also recreates Chihiro's exhaustion, vulnerability, and forced laughter in many scenes, while portraying the sincere friendship between women (the original Chihiro's comfort to Chihiro, the bento shop lady and Chihiro's embrace). This became a genuinely moving moment in the film. However, several important turns in Chihiro's life were successfully completed under the care of several men who were too good to be true. Their kindness, kindness and care make Chihiro's fate extremely smooth, which is very eye-catching.
Hypocrisy and cruelty
Equally ironic is the golden phrase that is seen as the theme of the entire film - "We are all aliens living in human bodies, from different planets, unable to understand each other, even as a family, even if it is a lover, even if it is a friend." ——In fact, it comes from the mouth of one of Chihiro's benefactors (and it is the girl Hisahiko Kuhiko who says "people from the same planet will meet one day" and hopes for the future and finally achieves her wish). This pessimistic loneliness argument is likely to affect Chihiro's choice of lonely survival: people are lonely, so although she comforts lonely and helpless people, and even promotes their encounter and understanding, she has been wandering, changing jobs, not in love, not relatives, not friends, and enjoying the freedom of wandering the world alone.
However, can a former sex worker like Chihiro, a part-time bento shop, and a female dairy worker at the end of the film really achieve such a state of freedom and freedom? It's doubtful. Let the low-level women who endure the burden of humiliation become the salvation of the world, and beautify their survival predicament into a warm and heartfelt inspirational drama, which not only seems hypocritical, but also cruel.