If you want to say that the most popular TV series in recent times, it is none other than Wong Kar-wai's "Flowers".
But it's a pity that limited to the scale of domestic dramas, the most popular erotic drama of the king of sunglasses can't be played at all.
The audience can only taste the sexual tension from the "driving" shot of the stream of consciousness.
Uncle Yu came to make up for it a little off-the-field.
Looking back at the masterpieces of the King of Sunglasses that were internationally renowned 20 years ago.
Although this is a platter movie, Wong Kar Wai's part is only 40 minutes long.
But the extreme lens language and aesthetic atmosphere, as well as the performances of the two top actors, have already fascinated the audience.
Today, let's feel the temptation from "Eros" -
Eros
Eros
"Eros" is a very special movie.
In 2001, Wong Kar-wai met the producer of Italian director Antonioni in Paris.
At that time, this world-class film master was nearly 90 years old, and he could not speak or move because of a stroke.
But he still wants to make movies.
Antonioni
Antonioni hopes to make a film about Eros on his 90th birthday.
But his physical condition no longer allowed him to shoot a full movie.
So he invited Wong Kar-wai and Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar to complete this three-part work.
But later, for various reasons, Almodóvar withdrew from the cooperation and made his story into "Bad Education".
Excerpt from an interview with Eros: A Private Collector's Edition on Two Discs
In his place, it was American director Steven Soderbergh.
He made a name for himself with Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which explores the sexual psychology of American society.
In fact, Wong Kar-wai was filming "2046" at that time, and the time was very tight.
But Antonioni has always been a director he admires very much, and since it has not been long, he readily agreed.
This short film still continues the consistent aesthetic style of Wong Kar-wai's films-
暧昧,朦胧,tide moisture。
A beautiful woman in half-open clothes stretched out a hand with red nail polish.
Gently stroked the arm of a young boy, and slowly reached between his legs and rubbed it hard.
Under the stroke, the boy did nothing but sweat, tremble, and grasp the corner of his shirt.
The woman gasped and said:
Remember how you feel today, it will look good if you make me clothes later.
There is no hint of it, and there is no fishy smell.
Wong Kar-wai uses an ambiguous gesture that can be called "conservative" but extremely tempting to express his love to the fullest.
The title of this short film is "Hands".
It is precisely because of Gong Li and Zhang Zhense's non-obscene "hand" play that they are famous.
In an interview, Wong Kar-wai once said that his inspiration was a 1930s Shanghai novel and a classmate's dancing sister.
Actually, the story is very simple.
In Hong Kong in the 60s, the little tailor (played by Zhang Zhen) helped the master run errands and gave cheongsams to the famous courtesan Miss Hua Hua (played by Gong Li).
The little tailor who has never had any sexual experience is moved by the sound of Miss Hua and her lover on the wall.
After Miss Hua found out, she "educated" her.
The little tailor had an uncontrollable emotion for Miss Hua because of this.
For many years afterward, the little tailor loved Miss Hua without reciprocating anything.
But until Miss Hua died, the relationship between the two did not change substantially, and it was always the relationship between the customer and the tailor.
The whole story is filled with a sad atmosphere.
The little tailor who can't love is always sitting outside a wall, listening to the woman she loves having sex with other men.
And the cramped and dimly lit place also externalized the little tailor's suppressed and restrained love.
Wong Kar-wai is best at condensing the most intense lust into the most restrained actions and words.
It's like a little tailor using his hands to measure Miss Hua's figure.
The wide and hot palms roamed along the close-fitting cheongsam and felt the changes in Miss Hua's figure.
The two breaths that are gradually scorching are the thoughts and desires that the little tailor can hardly suppress after not seeing Miss Hua for many years.
Like a little tailor, he reached into the cheongsam made for Miss Hua, and stroked the fabric of the cheongsam as if Miss Hua herself.
The irrepressible gasp and climax were the outbursts of silence after he listened to Miss Hua pick up the guests again.
And every time the little tailor and Miss Hua looked at each other through the mirror.
It's all quiet longing and lingering.
Wong Kar-wai uses his hands to create a secret but imaginative space in which love surges.
Although the core theme is the same, the three directors are not clear about the subject matter of each other's shooting.
Compared with Wong Kar-wai, the other two stories of "Eros" are completely different.
Soderbergh's "Balance" is somewhat grotesque.
Men in black and white intermingle with beautiful women in bright blue.
In New York in the 1950s, Robert Downey Jr. plays a man who complains to his psychiatrist.
His husband and wife relationship is like "ice", and his wife has always refused to go on a skin-to-skin relationship with him.
The reason is that he always dreams of cheating with a woman.
In the dream, the beautiful woman stroked his face naked, and then walked into the bathroom.
The man listened to the continuous sound of the water, imagined what the woman would look like in the bathroom, and then decided to take a mandarin duck bath with great interest.
After that, the woman takes a shower and dresses up, kisses the man and leaves.
Then the phone rang, and it was disturbing and annoying.
But when I picked it up, there was no sound, which was very strange.
The man was lying on the psychiatrist's bed, carefully describing his dreams.
But instead of listening carefully, the doctor took a telescope and spied on something.
After a while, I folded the paper airplane, and I felt like I was busy to death.
By the time the man finished his dream, he felt very tired.
With the doctor's permission, he lay back on the treatment bed and fell into a deep sleep.
In the dream, the man saw the beautiful woman again.
A noisy bell rang in my ears.
But when he was woken up, he found that his wife was lying on his bed, and the woman in front of him was the woman in his dream.
Then the camera turned, and the psychiatrist turned out to be a colleague of the man.
What is a dream and what is real?
What does that spring dream represent?
Soderbergh's dreams are hard to tell if they are true or false.
And Antonioni's "Danger Threshold" is even more mysterious.
The protagonists of this story are also a couple with emotional problems.
The two had a disagreement on the issue of "sex".
The husband wants to have a little marital life with his wife from time to time.
But the wife felt that "sex was just an empty space", and her husband's thirst for her made her breathless.
So the husband and wife who were still on vacation had a big quarrel and parted ways.
The husband met a female neighbor who lived near him.
It was a completely different woman from her wife, who enjoyed sex and loved sex.
She will follow her own heart.
will also be contaminated with a dewy relationship with a married man.
However, when you think that after the husband has a relationship with the neighbor, the story will lead to the confrontation between marriage and love, but the husband leaves in style, and the story comes to an abrupt end.
What's even more amazing is that at the end of the film, Antonioni asks his wife and neighbors to come to the beach and dance naked.
The final scene is frozen in the two encounters.
The same, one embraces sex, the other pursues spirit, they are like two sides of the same body.
At this moment, love and lust have returned to the most primitive state.
For a long time, most of the discussions among domestic audiences about "Eros" have revolved around Wong Kar-wai.
In comparison, the short films of the two Western directors do seem more obscure.
Soderbergh's story is full of psychoanalytic overtones:
Reality, dreams, desires, symbols...
Most of the expressions of lust are narrated from the third perspective.
Desire is no longer a natural impulse, but a state of existence as a "material".
Antonioni brings "eros" back to the original meaning of "Eros":
The name of the god of love in Greek mythology.
He uses the attitudes of two women towards their own desires to explore the origin of love.
But Wong Kar-wai is as focused on "romance" and "era" as ever, and has less metaphysical content than the other two.
And, in contrast, "Hand" is indeed a more complete story.
The other two are more like essays inspired by feelings.
Uncle Yu felt that there was no need to compare the three together.
After all, directors of different ages and cultural backgrounds are bound to be different in the expression of lust.
And these three short films with different styles also interpret love from three different levels.
Wong Kar-wai is a typical representative of oriental connotation.
Although in his story, there is a lot of sexual tension.
But what he wants to say is the word "love" before "desire", that is, love.
As a dusty woman, Miss Hua, at the end of her life, chose to use her hands again to respond to the little tailor's selfless love for many years.
But this hand full of emotion is not the one that caresses the little tailor, but the one that blocks the lips.
Compared with deliberately giving you pleasure, this subconscious action out of "loving you, protecting you, and reluctant to give you up" reflects the weight of love.
It also highlights the forbearance character in the oriental emotion.
Soderbergh, as you can tell from his debut film "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", is a director who loves to explore social psychology.
In the story of "Balance", he places a number of social attributes on his desires.
Whether it is some details of what the man said in the dream, or a series of changes in the identity of the characters after the reversal, it shows that the so-called spring dream is caused by the pressure and desire of the man's daily life.
As a member of the Hollywood mechanism, he is also very good at using mature shooting skills to take the audience into the movie dream.
As for Antonioni, the initiator of the movie "Eros" is the one who focuses on "desire" itself.
It's just that this desire is not simply sexual desire.
It's a kind of Adam and Eve-like natural desire before eating the apple.
Just like the wife in the film, she will not be uncomfortable when she dresses revealingly, and it will not make people feel erotic.
On the contrary, in the bright scenery of Italy, a natural beauty is generated.
Antonioni uses a technique with Enlightenment literary connotations to exile his desire to nature.
Of course, different people have different interpretations of Eros.
And that's one of the meanings of this movie.
As Uncle Yu said at the beginning of the establishment of this column:
Neither love nor lust is simply a pleasure of the flesh.
Cultural connotation, spiritual strength, social relations...
These can find their own facets from "desire".
It would be too narrow to make a simple comparison on just one level.
The same is true for movies.