Zhou Dongyu and Liu Haoran, this time they are out!
Time Contributor | Simon
Flashes of light, drama is like life.
After "Young You", it has been 4 years, and I haven't seen the release of a new film with Zhou Dongyu as the female number one.
For various reasons, she obviously holds a lot of inventory in her hands, but none of them can be released.
Until the appearance of Chen Zheyi, which helped her successfully break the game, the new film "Burning Winter" cooperated by the two was shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival.
Zhou Dongyu stepped onto the international stage as the heroine of the competition film.
This new film will be released on August 22 at the Qixi Festival, and today Time Jun will come to unveil its mystery.
"Burning Winter"
Directed by Chen Zheyi
"Burning Winter" is director Chen Zheyi's first film shot entirely in China.
Some mainland audiences may not be familiar with his name. He is a talented post-80s Singaporean filmmaker and a regular at the Cannes Film Festival.
When he was still making short films, he won the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Special Honor Award for "Grandma".
The first feature film "Mom and Dad Are Not Home" won the Golden Camera Award (Director's First Award) at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Golden Horse Best New Director and Best Original Screenplay.
The second feature film "Tropical Rain" won 5 nominations including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Golden Horse Awards, and finally won the Best Actress Award.
"Burning Winter" is his third feature film and was shortlisted for a focus unit at the Cannes Film Festival.
Looking at the entire Chinese film industry, Chen Zheyi is a very special existence.
His films carry a clear thematic preference and personal style. He is good at photographing families, and his main focus is on relationships.
"Parents Are Not Home" talks about the relationship between parents and children in the East, and the relationship between children and nannies; "Tropical Rain" is about the broken relationship between husband and wife, about the relationship between teachers and students.
By "Burning Winter", he began to focus on the emotional relationship between men and women after the 90s.
When dealing with this kind of selection, Chen Zheyi's lens is usually ambiguous.
He likes to use rich and full details to create atmosphere and set the mood.
For example, "Tropical Rain" uses sweltering and humid weather and continuous drizzle to hint at the emotional undercurrent between the characters.
The emotional fluctuations of "Burning Winter" have become more turbulent, and every empty mirror and every scene carries emotions.
Chinese version of "Dream of Paris"
The film premiered last weekend, and the first wave of film reviews has already come out.
Some people praised Zhou Dongyu's superb performance, some people were surprised that Liu Haoran contributed large-scale scenes, and some people said that Qu Chuxiao was charming.
However, the most frequent evaluation is "Chinese version of the dream of Paris" - a fantasy dream.
The film tells the ambiguous story of two men and a woman who quickly establish an intimate relationship in a short period of time and finally have to part ways.
The passionate scene in which the actors express their love has become the hottest topic.
Tour guide Nana (played by Zhou Dongyu) and Han Xiao (played by Qu Chuxiao), who works in a restaurant, live in Yanbian. Haofeng (played by Liu Haoran), who participated in a classmate's wedding, came here from Shanghai, signed up for a tour group, and met the two.
Han Xiao had a good impression of Nana, but the other party only regarded him as a buddy.
Haofeng appears as an interloper, stirring up the relationship between the three and triggering a limit pull between adults.
Similar to "Dream of Paris", the characters played by Zhou Dongyu and Liu Haoran also need to interpret the complex emotions that only adults can understand through several intimate scenes, and promote the audience to think about the emotional identity and survival conditions of young people.
Although the erotic drama has caused heated discussions, "Burning Winter" is not a gimmick film, and behind the madness of love is loneliness.
Specifically, the three young people carry different lonely backgrounds. Behind these loneliness, there is a metaphor for the pain of young Chinese.
Nana's pain comes from the regret of being forced to give up her dreams.
She was originally a girl who liked figure skating, but an accident forced her to quit halfway through and turn to work as a tour guide.
Therefore, when she learned about Haofeng's experience of working hard in Shanghai and trying to realize her dreams, tears unconsciously flowed.
Haofeng's pain comes from the confusion of working hard in big cities.
This "elite man" who has worked hard in Shanghai's financial industry has been working for many years and still cannot resolve the class gap. Only ice cubes can be used to hide the sadness that slips from the corners of your eyes.
Han Xiao is the most free character among the three, and his favorite thing is "life is not like this, how do you want to live". But he also has lonely moments, more because of "love".
The director selected three representative samples of contemporary Chinese young people, showing the common mental anxiety and survival conditions of Chinese young people.
They struggle in reality, but neither of them lives the life they want, and the short-lived love is nothing more than the comfort of two lonely souls embracing warmth.
The film as a whole looks like a love letter to the post-90s.
The director uses gentle, hazy and ambiguous shots to tell everyone that the film cares about the changes in the lives of young people, and then allows the audience to have a kind of companionship and warmth to be seen.
Time-kun here again mentions the performance of the three actors.
Liu Haoran broke through a lot, breaking the delicate appearance in commercial films in the past, and interpreted an unambitious "middle class" with slovenly stubble and messy hair.
Zhou Dongyu's business ability is still very capable of fighting, especially the three crying scenes, which show complex and layered emotions.
In the film, you can hardly see that the three actors have any eye-catching makeup and hair styling, and Zhou Dongyu almost starred without makeup.
The director wants them to become part of all sentient beings and become ordinary people around you, me and him, so that they can interpret the life state of ordinary people and show the spiritual outlook of ordinary people.
This also makes the film look more substitutionary and grounded, and every young person can see themselves from them.
Romantic Northeast narrative
In recent years, there have been not many movies shot in the northeast.
It seems that since "Daylight Fireworks", the creators have reached a certain consensus, as long as they shoot crime suspense themes, they will go to the northeast to make a big fuss.
Unrestrained consumption, magnifying the gray past of the Northeast, as if there was only chaos, crime, and desolation left there. It was as if all the cases in the northeast were taken for granted.
In the eyes of domestic entertainment creators, the northeast has almost become a hotbed of violent crime.
It is precisely because of this contrast that the Northeast in this film is so different.
Yanbian in Chen Zheyi's lens - romantic, psychedelic, silver wrapped.
The border town after the snow is like a dreamlike glass world; Ice rinks everywhere, galloping at night is like flying in the sky; When you look up, you can see the cold and condensed frost, which is a beautiful scenery created by nature.
Chen Zheyi uses ice and snow as a romantic element to explain the relationship between the three characters, as well as each other's life encounters.
The ice sculpture maze is an important narrative symbol, and the cold ice sculpture has been processed by the director into a place for the lost people in the city to stay.
The three protagonists, here they rush, get lost, fight, and finally laugh.
Just like their lives, moving through each other's lives will eventually become passers-by. But as long as you find an exit, life will have a new direction.
At the end, everyone must say goodbye and embark on a new journey. This time, their thinking about the future has changed, which is also the meaning of meeting each other.
In the eyes of Time Jun, "Burning Winter" is Chen Zheyi's most free movie.
The freedom here can be interpreted on two levels.
From the creative level, the film does not have a strong dramatic conflict, the rhythm is smooth, and the moist things are silent.
The director is open to the handling of emotions, and the audience looks more relaxed.
Thematically, the freedom it expresses is an open-minded idea.
In this life, we will always meet, love, entangle, and parting with different people for various reasons. There is no relationship that can go one way to the dark according to the established plan.
Whether it's friends or lovers, where the relationship ultimately goes, it is not something that can be controlled by man.
What we can do is not let those experiences happen in vain. Remember who passed through your life, made an impact and change, and ultimately made you who you are now.