The French women he photographed are all evil women I love

It is said that François Aujon may be the director who understands women best in Europe at present.

Ou Rong loves to shoot women, and when he shoots, he is a shadow, like a maze. Sometimes I feel that Ou Rong shooting female characters is like shooting the song of a water demon, patting the tangled wet rhizome, and shooting the melancholy heart that is swallowed alive. The Ou Rong woman is complex, restrained, and fragrant. And he always uses a neat and classical narrative to refract the shadows of these women from the dark room. It's a kind of lens love without gaze.

His new film "My Crime" this year also tells about women and tells new stories about women in the old era. Along with 2002's "8Women" and 2010's "Potiche", Ou Yung's "female trilogy" finally surfaced, and women, especially complex women, became the motif of Ou Yung's films.

In fact, the stories of women in Ou Rong's movies are far more than a "trilogy". The women in Ou Rong's movies will not fall into the vortex of stereotypes. Their relationship with the self is always close and honest, and their reconciliation with the self-contradiction is always giving the audience strength.

▲From left to right, the movies "Eight Beautiful Pictures", "Vase" and "My Crime"

"My Crime" can be said to be a very clever work. When filming women, Ou Rong's perspective is not actually that kind of blind flattery, but more about showing the sensitivity in talking about gender issues, allowing the audience to interpret the metaphors on their own.

This is a great movie to watch in winter. The most suitable thing to watch in the cold winter night is the murder story, and the more suitable for the winter night than the murder story is the murder story that can make people laugh. What's more, Paris in the 1930s, from costumes to drama, was exquisite.

▲ "My Crime"

The heroine Madeleine is young, beautiful, and poor, and belongs to the entry-level Wen Qing configuration that is like a fake package. Like other Wen Qing, she has a dream of art - she wants to become a professional actress, but suffers from lack of opportunities and is busy with livelihood. At this time, she was ghostly accused of murdering the producer, and with the help of her lawyer friends, she reached a consensus with the judicial officers who were lazy to judge the case, agreeing to stage a "legitimate defense, manslaughter" drama, which shook Paris and gained fame.

Although the play is in the 1930s, it actually has a subtle intertextual relationship with today's world. Actresses who bravely point out that they are harassed may be coerced, let women eat and wear warmth, or they may be lies... What Ou Rong wants to tell, at this moment, is more like the situation of women as a whole. When a woman wants self-actualization, how much does she really need to give up?

From 2002 to 2023, Ou Yung's sensitivity to women's narratives has long been evident in the early days of his career. At first glance, "Eight Beautiful Pictures" at the beginning of the millennium looks like an Agatha Christie-style secret room stage play, but in fact, it is more like a beautiful Mobius ring that Oujon uses to mock romance.

In fact, for a long time, Ou Rong has always wanted to shoot movies with only actresses. And the script of "Eight Beautiful Pictures" was also scavenged by him everywhere and finally carved and formed.

What would a movie with eight women look like? Is it a harem fight, or a power struggle? In Ou Yung's script, neither is either. None of the eight women in the movie are murderers of the male protagonist, but they all have a heart as sharp as a blade. They lie, they steal, they take revenge, they hug, kiss, they enlighten each other—they are all evil women, but they are all cute.

▲ "Eight Beautiful Pictures"

Yes, in Ou Yung's film, the dead man is the most faceless existence, he is just a symbol that fades into the background, and the women are the emotions of the drama itself.

The most rare thing about Ou Rong's film is to see specific women.

In "Pool Love Murder", Ou Rong fictionalizes a female writer who completes her work in a small town. She has a typical intellectual indifference, shuttling like a viper through the detective stories she constructs. The more scorched the sun in Southern France, the more misty and ambiguous her gloom became.

This is a glamorous and calm journey of desire, spread out like a curtain under the layered lens language of Ou Yung. The sparkle of water permeates the film. The female writer's eyes are very shrewd, and they are used to read all the secrets of the town, like a pale and polished ghost. For her, the desires and flesh and blood of others are the best appetizers, and her writing process is part of her own inward exploration.

▲ "Pool Love Murder"

Looking at Isabel in "Flower and Moon Appearance", I found that she also has a natural curiosity about the depths of lust. The "first time" with her lover makes her want to inquire about this mysterious parallel world, so she begins to work as a call girl. It sounds like a very fragrant plot, but the movie itself is actually more focused on the relationship between Isabella and her family and self-growth.

▲ "Flower and Moon Appearance"

Desire is for all people as fierce and cunning young beasts. For women, curiosity about desire will be more constrained in many cases, and it will also make it more difficult for women to take care of the young beasts in their hearts. Isabella goes from fear, hostility, and defiance to her baby beast, to a step by step who has reached peace and reconciliation by exploring its boundaries. This is a process that every woman goes through in her life, but it is not so often told - thanks to Ou Jong, in such a poetic way, to tell the experience of women so intimate and intimate.

▲ "Flower and Moon Appearance"

In "Franz", the subject that Ou Rong wants to tell is also a woman's vigorous desire for love. War and politics is more like a footnote to the film, it is more about the writing of the heroine Anna.

▲ "Franz"

Anna's husband died during the war, and a strange man came to visit her, claiming to be her late husband's old friend. As time passed, the death-like silence in Anna's heart was broken by this "stand-in", and she had the ability to love again, but she also found that this time the love also cut her back and forth again.

The love story of the women in Ou Yung's lens will never be open and transparent, and the straight feelings can never convey the true texture of love. There will be those "dirty" things in Ou Yung's love, lies, betrayal, cowardice, and those are the places where love is most likely to sting people.

▲ "Franz"

It is precisely because of this that Ou Rong seems to understand women so well. This male director is really an evil door, and the evil seems to be born knowing a woman's obsession with strange love, as well as the contradictions and beliefs in a woman's bones.

In an interview, someone asked Ou Yung: What is your biggest motivation for making movies?

He replied that it was women, and the mystery of women. Indeed, the word "mysterious" is used precisely. To say that it is mysterious, actually implies a safe distance between the male director and the female narrative - no staring, no judgment, just presentation and empathy.

The women in Ou Yung's films are always silent and noisy, with an almost dangerous ghostly charm. They find a place of self in a confusing world. Primitive desires and acquired ambitions, the two together carve out Ou Rong-style women, who are crazy, astute and brave.

Therefore, the women photographed by Ou Rong are always so willing to watch and understand their subtle emotions. So, what is your favorite Ou Jong movie?

Content Editor: Yuzu