In addition to life and death, love is also a major event

Comments on I Love You! The first impression of this movie began with two patch trailers seen in theaters a year ago:

Ni Dahong held the cake against the door frame and said to Hui Yinghong, "I like you, I really like you." "The candlelight flickered, silent, and only the love in the confession was deafening.

Liang Jiahui and Ye Tong looked at each other with tears, and the spoon in their hands slammed on the edge of the bowl with trembling hands, and said "Wife, you have worked hard in this life." "It seems that half of the bitterness and love of half a life have been dissolved in this bowl of medicine.

When I saw these two trailers, I only had three words in my heart: hurry up.

In February this year, the film was officially announced to be released nationwide on June 21, and then I was invited to be the opening film of this year's Shanghai International Film Festival, and I was lucky to be one of the first audiences of this film in Shanghai.

After watching it, the movie subverted some of my previous imagination of it: although it tells the story of the elderly, there is no twilight in it, although there are deaths, diseases, and slightly cruel practical problems, but it is not bitter and deep, but sees a gushing vitality. It's hard to imagine that these four veteran actors, who have a combined age of 251, have presented the most extreme look of love for us young audiences on the big screen.

About the twilight love thing

I love you! " adapted from the comic of the same name by Korean cartoonist Jiang Cao, the director of this film, Han Yan, is one of the directors who are best at adapting comics into movies in China, and he previously adapted "Get Out!" Tumor Jun", whether it is word of mouth or box office, it shows his deep skills in this matter.

Let's get out! Tumor Jun" stills

Let's get out! Tumor Jun" box office results

In I Love You! , whether in the characters themselves or in the urban space where the story takes place, he has achieved localization to the extreme: the four main characters in the film have all made localized adaptations based on the original comic book from identity to personality, and the life dilemmas they each face are all "Chinese".

In addition, the starring of Ni Dahong, Hui Yinghong, Leung Jiahui and Ye Tong is also like four fixed sea god needles, ensuring the completion of the film in character shaping.

But even with such a luxurious creative team, for the current domestic market environment and cultural context, choosing to shoot such a love movie about "twilight love" is still a less secure choice.

Among them, the most difficult to cross is the problem of "marriage shame" of the elderly. In our cultural context, once the action of reproduction is completed, the matter of "falling in love" is stripped of its natural legitimacy, leaving only the original sin that Satan tempted human beings in the Garden of Eden: middle-aged people cheating outside marriage is naturally against public order and good customs, even if they remarry after divorce, there is no lack of relatives who jump out and persuade on the grounds that "it will affect children". Or take the movie as an example, the male characters of domestic love movies do have the uncle, but the premise is that there are no children and no wife, and it is best to have no divorce history, otherwise the accidental love movie will never return in the direction of the family ethics film.

Middle-aged people are still like this, and if a 60-year-old man wants to burn a vigorous twilight love, he will be branded as an "old and unorthodox" hat. One of the most representative characters is Comrade Su Daqiang, also played by Ni Dahong in "It's All Good", Su Daqiang wants to marry a nanny, and his son Su Mingcheng's sentence "So what does she want you?" Figure How old are you? Figure you don't bathe? , made him a representative of the "famous father", and with the explosion of the play, the old age and old body have also become the reason for the elderly to lose qualifications in love.

The famous father Su Daqiang

In dealing with this problem, director Han Yan showed great courage. At the beginning of the film, he uses a set of close-ups, in an almost "gaze" posture, to try to break the social disciplines that are set on the elderly:

The camera sweeps over Chang Weijie (Ni Dahong)'s home, where a pictorial with a female model is pasted on his bedside, and the insomnia old man stares at the pictorial, silently counting in his heart that the alarm clock is ringing. After getting up, he opened his mobile phone, watched the blind date program for the elderly in the small video while eating, and then he picked up the whip and hung it on his waist, and the next destination was to go to the park to watch other old men and old ladies dance.

Without a single line in just a few minutes, Chang Weijie was like a lonely and silent old beast, trapped in an iron cage composed of children's trivia, worldly gazes, and eighty square meters of public housing. Stripped of the determiner of "old age", often for the emotional dilemma that Jing is deeply trapped in as a "person", it was shown by director Han Yan in front of the audience. And it's hard to accuse such an old man of pursuing love for being disrespectful, because after our respective identity determiners, we as "people" may have had this moment of being trapped in loneliness.

And the appearance of Li Huiru (played by Hui Yinghong) liberated Chang Weijie from the cage. The two of them message each other before bed like a young couple, pick up trash together, go on a date at the zoo, and play in the water like children in the small yard. Under the nourishment of love, new vitality seems to emerge in the dry bodies of the two old men, and as the emotions of the two gradually heat up, this vitality becomes thinner and thinner.

In the film, director Han Yan did not deliberately add an "old man's taste" to Chang Weijie and Li Huiru's love scene, not only that, in the eyes of the audience, the two seem to be dozens of years younger out of thin air under the nourishment of love. This kind of treatment, whether for the director or the actor, is a "bold artist" choice, and if you are not careful, it will show a pretentious posture that deliberately imitates young people. But whether it is director Han Yan, Ni Dahong and Hui Yinghong, they have completed their respective tasks well.

Compared with those loves that occur naturally in adolescence, the twilight love between Chang Weijie and Li Huiru is more moving. After the spring rains, the green arch in the soil is a pleasing landscape, and under the rain, the dead old trees sprout, which can be called a miracle that can cause people's hearts to shake.

Life and death, ultimate love

If the love between Changwei Jing and Li Huiru is romantic like a love fairy tale, then another pair of elderly lovers in the film makes people see the most unbearable and heavy part of love at dusk. The highly infectious and faithful performances of Leung Ka Fai and Ye Tong also make this narrative branch the most emotional and emotional impact of the entire film.

In the clue of Xie Dingshan, the owner of the recycling station played by Leung Ka-fai, and his wife Zhao Huanxin, the first thing is the disability of his partner.

Zhao Huanxin, played by Ye Tong, suffers from Alzheimer's disease, is confused most of the time, and is only sober at a rare time, and Xie Dingshan must lock her at home when she goes out to collect waste, otherwise she will run out the door by herself. But more impactful for the audience than this, this disease can also make people incontinent.

In love, sometimes a fart will become a "social death moment" for young people, but for Xie Dingshan, dealing with his lover's excrement has become a daily routine in life.

The second is life and death. "Ask what is the love of the world, teach life and death." Life and death follow each other, which may be the most extreme imagination of human beings for "love". For young people, the love of "dying to live" may seem a bit bloody, but for Xie Dingshan, dying with his lover is the only means he can use to combat the fear of losing his lover.

In the movie, Xie Dingshan told Zhao Huanxin that he was timid and did not dare to walk through the world after death alone. There may be no answer to whether there is reincarnation after death, but a world without Zhao Huanxin should be no different from the place after death for Xie Dingshan.

In the movie, the sweetness between Li Huiru and Xie Dingshan Zhao Huanxin are often warned, presenting the audience with a full picture of the old man's sorrow and happiness in love:

Between Xie Dingshan and Zhao Huanxin, there should have been a happy time that seemed to be different from Li Huiru; And the pain of old illness and death they encounter is destined to be part of the future emotional road that the other two must experience, in the film, the choice between the two about whether to "live and leave" or "die parting" also constitutes the narrative basis of the final climax of the film.

The strong contrast between the two sides of this love constitutes both the film's most powerful dramatic conflict and the film's most shocking emotional tension.

Before the fireworks fall, light up the night of life

In the film, in addition to the above two pairs, there are two very important characters: Li Huiru, a Cantonese opera celebrity who has been dependent on her for many years, and her young lover, a principal of a Chinese opera school. Regarding the love story of the two of them, the film does not focus much, but in my eyes, the story of these two assumes a certain "topic" role for the entire movie:

In that special era, because of some misunderstandings, two people who loved each other deeply chose to separate, but in the end, neither of them could let go, each of them for half a life, and people were still tormented by this love in their hearts in their old age.

Director Han Yan's almost theatrical exaggerated role creation of the two old men in the almost theatrical style has a more or less allegorical meaning - if love is in front of you, don't wait until the gray hair is empty.

And this is also the answer to the multiple-choice question placed in front of Chang Weijie and Li Huiru. Just like the brilliant fireworks they saw on the cruise ship in the movie, it may only be clear in the sky for a while, but before it falls, it should also light up the night sky in a blooming manner.

I love you! " is about to be released nationwide on June 21, remember to watch it, and remember to bring tissues.