The 30-year-old Li Meng feels that she is the kind of actress with strange luck, in Vanity Fair, where everyone fights for chance, she was favored by luck at the beginning, and later imprisoned by this luck.
She entered the industry in a way that seemed the best, filming Wang Quanan's "White Deer Plain" at the age of 18, the other party recommended her to Jia Zhangke, and she filmed "Destiny", both directors have praised her face and acting skills, feeling that she is the kind of person who is naturally suitable for being an actor. She has an enviable start, but ten years later, when it comes to Li Meng, people still frequently mention "Destiny" and "White Deer Plain", perhaps plus Zhang Songwen's wife Wang Yao in "Hidden Corner" in 2019, she once lamented in an interview: "People have taken you to the most core place, but you have gone astray." ”
The reasons for "going astray" are complex, perhaps because of a strong personality, perhaps because opportunities and fame came too early, and she was too young to harness them. As an actress, she held her breath and wanted to go to a higher place and play a better role, but those years were always unsatisfactory, the hour was over, the big may not be good, she was anxious, painful, sad for missing the opportunity, and walked a few years of winding and confused path, but fortunately, later, she still figured it out little by little, "Do you want to fight for breath or really love movies?" She asked herself.
In 2018, she played a mother who had just been released from prison in Taiwan, and the director didn't even show her the script, she thought she really lived there, buying vegetables, cooking, and chatting every day, the slow process made her feel as if she had come out of some spiritual "prison", she felt that she might have found some kind of foundation, "I will live in every filming city, adapt to the environment, and stabilize my heart." I will realize that no matter what I lose, I still have life. I don't think about how I'm going to gain anything, or I'm afraid of losing. She said.
"Snow Cloud" premieres at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival
At the recent Berlin Film Festival, the film "Snow Cloud" starring her was shortlisted for the "Adventure" section, becoming the first Chinese-language film to be shortlisted since the establishment of this unit. Earlier, in 2021, the short film of the same name "Snow Cloud" was shortlisted for the short film competition unit of the Cannes Film Festival. While walking the red carpet in Berlin, she met Fumao, the president of the Cannes Film Festival, who had received her when "Destiny" was shortlisted for Cannes in 2013, and he was happy to see her and said, "You're back here after many years." Li Meng was also very happy.
Here's what she said:
"You're back in Cannes after 8 years"
On the day of the premiere of "Snow Cloud" at the Berlin Film Festival, I was very excited, although I have known about the shortlisting for a long time, but when you really see it come true, you will still feel a lot of emotions, it is like walking from a dream to reality. When we filmed the short film "Snow Cloud" in 2019, we never imagined that we would go to Cannes step by step, and then go to Berlin with the feature film of the same name.
When director Wu Lang found me in 2019, I didn't actually have any expectations, I felt that it was just a short film, and it was only filmed for four days. At that time, the male protagonist of "Snow Cloud" had already been decided to be played by Li Kangsheng (who won the 50th Golden Horse Award for Best Actor for his role in "Outing"). I should learn from the actor about acting, just a very simple idea. When I was shooting, I was vegan, and as soon as my hair was tied up, I started acting.
Later, when I learned in 2021 that this short film had entered Cannes, it was at 2 o'clock one night, I fell asleep and received a call from the director. He said, we went to Cannes, and I was like, "Lie down, oh my God, how is it possible, it's impossible?" Are you sure? "That's what it feels like. I burst into tears at that time, because at that time, we still had a very difficult road with this film, when we made short films, in fact, to raise funds to make feature films, to show the capital short films, to prove that we are capable of making movies. After shooting the short film, the director took it to participate in the venture capital unit of the Shanghai Film Festival, and we won the special recommendation project award from the jury at that time, which was awarded to the director by Wong Kar-wai, which gave us great encouragement at that time, and everyone also felt that this was a relatively mature project. However, the feature film failed to start smoothly for a while, and the project was suspended for a while, and then because it was shortlisted for Cannes, the progress of the entire project made a big breakthrough.
"Snow Cloud" premieres at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival
I was walking the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival, and I picked a bright red dress for a look, and walking down the road to the Film Palace, I heard someone call my name in Chinese, I turned my head and found that there were a lot of Chinese, I guess they were all local students. When I met my compatriots in a foreign country, and they knew me and saw my works, I really felt magical and moving.
On the opening red carpet, I also met Fu Mao, president of the Cannes Film Festival. He walked right ahead of me. He also came to see the Berlin Film Festival. For me, he is an old friend at the festival, he received me and director Jia Zhangke in 2013, and in 21 years the short film "Snow Cloud" was shortlisted for Cannes, and when I returned to Cannes, I also met him, and he said to me at that time, "You are back to Cannes in 8 years." ”
I listened with great emotion. In 2013, when I graduated from Beiying, my film "Destiny" was shortlisted for the main competition at Cannes, and when I was 20 years old, my first trip to France and my first trip to Europe felt like opening up a new world that I didn't know anything about.
"Snow Cloud" was shortlisted for the red carpet photo of the 2023 Berlin Film Festival
I was walking the streets of Cannes and I saw a lot of seagulls, a lot of tourists from all over the world, a lot of stars, a lot of security, and you realized that this is an international stage, and then you are going to set off here.
That was my first red carpet walk. I haven't been to any events [related to movies] before, not one. I remember being very nervous on the day of the premiere, when we took a special car into the main venue, and in the car I said to the driver in English, "I'm very nervous, I think I should make a mistake." "He comforted me and said, you don't need to be nervous, he said that he has carried a lot of superstars in this car, Angelia Jolie, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Maggie Cheung... He told me it was just an event, a simple ritual, that you should have fun, that you should enjoy your moment.
I felt as if I was comforted, you find that many Westerners are indeed a very easy state, in many times that we think are very important, they are very relaxed, there is nothing remarkable, you just come to enjoy.
There was also a movie-watching event that day, and the audience sitting in the audience included director Ang Lee, Carina Lau, Tony Leung, Zhang Yuqi, Spielberg, and audiences from all over the world, including the Coen brothers, who also came, these are some of the global superstars that I may have known very well later, and Miss Zhang Ziyi also came, and she also said a word to me, she said, come on little girl.
"Snow Cloud" was shortlisted for the red carpet photo of the 2023 Berlin Film Festival
I was actually in a state of confusion and felt like I didn't know how to fit in. We went to the premiere, and everyone was there to communicate, but I was a newcomer, no one would talk to me too much, and I didn't know how to communicate with people. I can't fit in with everyone, all I can talk about is my experience shooting this movie, but everyone doesn't talk about it. What I can do is to silently observe everyone, just hide in a corner, look at everyone, I am actually very distant.
I remember that it was May 17, 2013, I remember I posted a circle of friends, I said today I premiere, today our 2013 undergraduate students took graduation photos, my graduation photos are in Cannes. We took a picture of a movie crew. When I send this paragraph, I am actually a little sad, in that I graduated today, I am in a foreign country, a place I have never been to, and I am not with my classmates.
No matter what I lose, I still have a life
I didn't really realize that Cannes was a very high place to start, I felt very confused, it was just the beginning, you got into the industry in a way that seemed like the best way possible. But it's not necessarily the best, it just looks the best.
After going to Cannes, I opened my horizons, but I didn't know where I was going, I didn't know what kind of opportunities I would have when I returned home, or what opportunities would I encounter? Can I go back to Cannes again and can I act better? These are all unknowns, you just completed the work "Destiny", it does not belong to you, to a large extent it is the glory of director Jia Zhangke.
In 2021, the short film "Snow Cloud" was shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival red carpet photo
After that we went to the group, and for a long time I didn't know what I was going to do, whether I should go forward or backward. People think Cannes is a good starting point, a place where dreams begin, but for me, this may later become a limitation, that is, I feel that I should be more careful in choosing scripts. If you haven't been to [Cannes], you probably don't have this restriction in your mind. After I came back from Cannes, I had this feeling, there will be some obstacles when taking on the play, I am afraid to take on a play, I am also afraid that I will not be able to receive the play, and I will be very entangled in the choice. After "Destiny", there were many opportunities to find it, but I didn't catch the best ones.
By the time I was 25, I was so anxious that it was too late to say that I didn't grasp something. I entered a state of crazy playing, became a rushing person, took over seven plays a year, there were starring roles, supporting roles, cameos, and rolling plays, but after intensive work, I felt very empty, because I felt that there was no progress and breakthrough, and there was no way to surpass myself, I also became very emotionally unstable at that time, it was easy to be irritable, and I felt that my heart was empty, as if it was stuck there, could not go up, could not come down.
The turning point was in 2018, when I went to Taiwan to shoot the movie "That My Dearest Stranger". Director Zhang Zuoji had just come out of prison at that time, and I was playing a mother who had just been released from prison in the movie, I felt that it was like a metaphor, my own career was also in a predicament, this predicament may be very similar to prison, people who come out of prison, everything has to be readjusted. I filmed that scene for eight or nine months, and for a long time I lived that kind of down-to-earth life, going to the vegetable market to buy vegetables, going to the roadside stall, cooking with colleagues, drinking some wine and chatting in the evening, and then walking home alone, feeling like a "wandering artist". That movie was also unlucky, didn't win any awards, but it was important to me, and one day I suddenly found myself in a better state, less anxious and restless, no longer very confused and scared, and in the process slowly found the answer to what to do next.
In this industry, you rarely really live, but during that time, I spent a lot of time in life, even movies are a kind of life. The character I play is also a very close to life, and real life is the foundation of everyone, not just actors.
"Hidden Corner"
I don't think it's much better than before in acting, and how much stronger my heart is than before, but I'm actually seeking a kind of calm, a kind of eternal and unchanging things. Because the entertainment industry is a vanity fair, it is easy to forget a person, but life will always be around you.
When I come back in 2018, I will live in every city where I film, adapt to the environment, and stabilize my heart. I will realize that no matter what I lose, I still have life. I don't think about how I'm going to gain anything, or I'm afraid of losing.
Absent home
The English name of "Snow Cloud" is very special, Absence, absent, in fact, the movie is about this meaning, an absent relationship, an absent dream, an absent man, and an absent home.
When I made a short film, I felt that this film was suitable for me, I knew how to express this thing (absent), I could understand her. The heroine Su Hong is a woman who wants to have a home, she has been adrift in Hainan for 10 years, saved a sum of money, she earned from working for ten years, plus a loan from the bank, she is to buy a suite, this suite is her and her daughter's habitat, she has this house, there is a sense of security, she will not be afraid of life.
"Snow Cloud"
I remember a scene where I was arguing with the real estate manager played by Renke. This character is relatively restrained, which is the director's idea. But I felt at the time that she needed to have an emotional outburst to get to this point, and the house meant everything to her. Before I started filming, I discussed with the director whether this scene could be released to act, or whether it could be a state of quarrel. In the end, the director used this version.
That's probably why I love acting, which allows me to take on a completely different posture, sometimes very different from my own imagination of the reaction. For me, playing or competing with different actors will get different results, and the final presentation will be unexpected, you never know what will happen when you are on the scene.
I asked the director if Su Hong's child was this male lead, but the director did not have a clear answer, this was blurred. So in my imagination, Su Hong should be a mother at a very young age, alone with children, she is also a girl at heart, not a mature mother state.
"Snow Cloud"
In a way, I'm a lot like her, and I also have an absent home. I was separated from my parents as soon as I was born, and I am from Hunan. At that time, everyone was generally poor and in the entrepreneurial stage, and my parents had no choice but to go to Shenzhen to work and earn money because they had to support their family. Grandma took me until I was three years old, and then she took me to Shenzhen on the green train, where I attended kindergarten and primary school, and I went abroad alone in junior high school to attend boarding school in Canada. At that time, there was a wave of immigration in Shenzhen, and there were some policies, so I went out. At that time, many people in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai went abroad to pan for gold at that stage.
Studying alone, in fact, it is quite lonely, and there are many words that I don't know who to say, you know that your parents are not around, in fact, you have no sense of existence, you will feel that other children's parents are around, why my parents are not by my side. My parents are there, I am a baby, then my parents are not around, how can I call a baby.
My school is in a small town in Toronto, with a small population and few things to do, and I spend almost all of my free time at home watching movies. I remember watching the movie "Gone with the Wind" once, I felt for the first time, maybe I can also express my inner emotions through performance, I somehow feel that I am very good at this thing, because I have been a very emotional little girl since I was a child, watching TV series, or chatting with female classmates about some secrets or something, I listen to others, I can immediately enter that scene, I can empathize.
At that time, I especially liked to dream, dreaming in class, dreaming after class, dreaming every day, and I always had a lot of fantasies about life. Then the teacher said that I didn't listen carefully in class, I didn't pay attention, my mother wanted to change my name, I wanted to pay attention, and then I told my mother, you can't change my name to Li Xing, and then my mother said, it must not be such a name, change your name to a Sven a little, just say that I am short of water in my life, let me be called Li Yaxi, and then I grew up in Guangdong, my classmates called me by name, it sounds like eating (laughs), and then I told my mother, quickly change my name back, Because I felt that others were scolding me every day, and then I called Li Meng back.
After watching "Gone with the Wind", I vaguely felt that I could express myself in the way I was good at, and at the same time I could find my sense of existence and value in this world. My Weibo avatar, that little girl, is three-year-old Vivien Leigh.
Later, I went to a professional art college such as Beijing Film Academy, and I was much later than others in terms of acting, but I was still a little talented in dance, and I began to practice dance hard, compared with dance students, I am definitely inferior to others, but I also have to practice. I wasn't very good in other aspects, like the lines, I was that kind of small voice, born with a lack of dantian qi, so I could only get the judges to pay more attention to me by dancing.
My parents were against me entering art colleges, and when I just graduated from junior high school, my mother wanted to take me to Tsinghua University and Peking University to have a look, she hoped that I could be admitted to these two universities in the future, I said I wanted to see Chinese opera and Nortel, my mother thought I was very unproductive, so they didn't accompany me to the exam. Probably because I was alone since I was a child, I started to make a lot of decisions on my own at a very young age, when I shared a room in an express hotel with another girl. I remember that it was still before the Spring Festival, it was still quite cold in Beijing, and the two of us ate a roasted sweet potato every morning and left for the exam, and only came back in the evening. Nortel, which we applied for together, also had one after the other, but she was eliminated in the first test. I went very smoothly, I was admitted in one time, and I don't know why.
When I was a freshman, director Wang Quanan picked me to shoot "White Deer Plain", and he told me at the time that I had a face that was naturally suitable for being an actor and suitable for the big screen, saying that the only thing I needed was to seize a good opportunity to come out. Later, it was also director Wang Quanan who recommended me to director Jia Zhangke.
Many people say that I have a face with a story. To be honest, I still don't have that self-knowledge. Before going to college, I never felt beautiful, and when I was in high school, some classmates said that I was a school flower, and some classmates said that I had a thick and ugly mouth.
At that time, thousands of students applied for Nortel, and finally chose 30. The threshold for entering the industry is also very high, and the director comes to the school to pick actors, and only one or two people are really selected. My parents felt at that time that even if I was admitted to Nortel, I would not be able to do this industry, to put it bluntly, there is still a long way from when you go to college to when you become an actor.
But I went to college in September, and in October, just after the military training ended, before the official start of classes, I was selected to act in "White Deer Plain", but there were only a few shots left in that play. Later, I filmed "Destiny", and my parents probably began to recognize it from that meeting, saying that you can get it well, in case you become a big star, it is not very good (laughs).
My classmates all think that I made two very good movies, but in fact, they were unlucky, "White Deer Plain" only had a few shots left in the end, and "Destiny" was not released in China.
But I feel now that it all makes sense. The richer and more complex a person's experience, and even the more tribulations she goes through, the better she can create a role, or present a role.
You watch Gone with the Wind, or just watch one of the best movies in the world. For example, "Instantaneous Universe", Michelle Yeoh, Miss Yang, before she became an Oscar actress, she experienced a lot, the so-called ups and downs of her life, in fact, to be honest, she is also from a very good background, she is from an aristocratic family in Malaysia, but she still decided to become an actor, she became a star from an actor, and then transformed from a star to an actor, there are too many experiences in the middle, from her original acting in Malaysia, then to Hong Kong beauty pageants, and then success, and then acting in Hong Kong, Then found that my beauty could not be compared with those big beauties in Hong Kong back then, what Zhu Yin, Lin Qingxia, Shu Qi, are all super beauty women. She played "Instantaneous Universe", is to play her life experience, her glamorous side, the whole rib fracture during filming, all her pain, physical, psychological, including her divorce, including her restart the stove, and then become an actor, go to Hollywood to work, be criticized, be dumped in the face, is a lot of all this. She said that when she met the role, she felt like she was gone again for 50 years.
That's the heaviness of an actor, and I think it might be the same for me. At the beginning, I didn't know that there are so many complicated things in the actor industry, whether it's opportunities, roles, setbacks, all of which I think must be unpredictable at the beginning, but I think that difficulty is the beginning of luck, when you feel difficult, you have to know that luck slowly comes to you. Sometimes you gain something, sometimes you lose something, how to measure the gain and loss, I think it is a lifetime thing, not just look at the present.
You see I got into film school, and then I became an actor, and I think it was a very lucky thing for me, it was like a dream come true. I feel like everything I'm doing now is on the path of my dream, little by little. There are many voices from the outside world, praise or criticism, but you still have to listen to your inner voice in the end, why did I choose this industry at such a young age? After so many things, why do you still have to go this way? I really love this industry, I just love to do this, and I can't do anything else to make myself so full inside.
Author丨Zhou Tian Editor丨Zhang Yue Produced丨Tencent News Gu Yu Studio
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![A poem written to the author of White Deer Plain[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)