A case of falling in marriage that was publicized afterwards

When marriage becomes a pattern of strong women and weak men, traditional intimate relationships are in crisis.

In "The Falling Trial", which won the 2023 Cannes Palme d'Or for Best Picture, German female writer Sandra became a suspect because her husband fell to death. It was found that in this relationship where women are strong and men are weak, men taste the loss of power. At the same time, the power struggle between the sole partners hurts both at the same time, and no one is the winner.

Falling intimacy

In the isolated Alps, Samuel, the husband of the writer Sandra, was found dead in front of his home with no witnesses. His wife, Sandra, became the only suspect.

The 76th Cannes Palme d'Or Best Film "Falling Trial" has won numerous awards in major film awards in the past year. At the 36th European Film Awards held last month, it continued to sweep, winning several awards such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress, and is considered the favorite film to hit this year's Oscars.

"Falling Judgment" is introduced with a suspenseful tone, pursuing the truth of the fall. The unwitnessed death case forced the German writer Sandra to testify in court in a foreign country in France. In the process, the relationship between the husband and wife of a strong woman and a weak man was laid out, and their contradictions were also presented to outsiders. Removing the gender filter, the audience, like the participants in the trial, feels the respective circumstances of the people in power and the controlled in the intimate relationship, especially the helplessness and resentment of those who have lost power.

At the beginning of the story, some scenes hint at the couple's relationship model.

In a wooden house in the French Alps, Sandra, a German writer in her 40s, is being interviewed by Zoe, a female graduate student in the Department of Literature. Sandra sipped red wine from time to time, and the alcohol and eye contact made the atmosphere ambiguous. Bypassing questions about writing, Sandra turns the conversation to Zoe, a schoolgirl.

The atmosphere is harmonious, and the noisy drumbeat comes from the attic, an instrumental version of the American rapper's 50-cent "P.I.M.P," a song with demeaning feminine overtones. Sandra explained to the schoolgirls in a light tone that her husband, Samuel, was working in the attic.

Samuel did not show up, and the sharp and noisy music intervened in his wife's conversation with others instead of him, completely disturbing the original atmosphere and ending the conversation between the two downstairs.

This was Samuel's last struggle and protest. More than an hour after Zoe left, Samuel was found dead in front of her home.

Figure | Sandra defends herself in court

Sandra stepped onto the judgment seat. In order to clear her name, she is forced to put herself in opposition to her husband and defend herself. The hidden wounds in this seemingly peaceful marriage relationship are finally exposed to the public.

"The Fallen Judgment" sets up a lot of details when shaping the couple's relationship.

Sandra and Samuel are both writers. However, Sandra's success continued, and while Samuel devoted much of his time to family affairs and raising his son. In his opinion, he has been following Sandra's pace to organize his family life, and has lost his own creative space.

This is the division of labor in the family.

In addition, the husband and wife are also different from social traditions in terms of personality and temperament. Unlike the gentle submissiveness that women are expected of, Sandra is calm and sharp, with her neat short hair combed back to reveal her sharp features. When their child was in an accident when he was four years old, Sandra vented her emotions with a brief cheating and then cheered up, while Samuel, who couldn't find an outlet, was wallowing in pain for a long time.

An imbalance of power can distort a relationship, and the person in the relationship suffers more.

In fact, Samuel also aspires to truly realize his own pursuit in writing. He had a weak voice in intimate relationships, and he protested, hoping to redistribute the responsibilities and time of the family with his wife. His voice trembled as he recounted his dedication to his family, his voice getting louder and louder, and his speed of speech became more and more urgent. Faced with her husband's broken emotions, Sandra sat motionless, frowned at him and vented, and refused to give in and change lightly.

This marriage obviously provided Sandra with relatively more convenience. Sandra, who is in a dominant position, has difficulty understanding her husband's needs and refuses to give up her vested interests. Samuel, who is speechless, can only use loud loud music to emphasize his existence over and over again.

The film does not describe married life at length, but through the analysis of various evidence during the trial, it profoundly reveals the hidden pain behind an unbalanced relationship. In this regard, the dialogue of the trial process in the film, and the fragments of the story that unfold from it, are a movie-watching experience that words cannot describe.

Samuel's psychiatrist stands on the witness stand and goes toe-to-toe with Sandra, who unveils Samuel's most negative feelings towards Sandra. Samuel describes Sandra's actions as "like an emasculation of him" and that he sees himself alone in the mental stress of an unbalanced relationship, with Sandra at the center of it all.

The setting of gender situation reversal makes Samuel, as a man, fall into the predicament that women more often encounter in reality. The hopelessness of self-realization, the embarrassment of being overwhelmed by trivial chores, the loss of not being understood and affirmed, Samuel tastes the pain of women. And Sandra, as the one in power, stood in the position of the men in the past, and threw out a fluttering denial: "No one forced you." If you want to leave more time for yourself, I have never stopped you. ”

By the middle and late stages of the film, it no longer matters who the real culprit is. With the exchange of testimony between the prosecution and defense, the audience immersed themselves in the different situations of the husband and wife in this intimate relationship.

When men who have been in power for a long time in society become the losers in relationships, the alienation of power from a relationship and people becomes more obvious. Unlike women who have been disciplined to be virtuous helpers, they are used to putting themselves behind the family, and it is difficult for men to give up their social values, and it is even more difficult for them to accept themselves as the "second sex" of assistance.

A line from Sandra's defense lawyer sums up the dilemma of the relationship: "Sandra's only crime is that she succeeded in Samuel's failed field. "The woman who has gained power, and the man who has lost power, cannot find their place in the traditional role script of society, and love is distorted and deformed in the mutual tilting of the self, and finally ushered in the fall of the relationship.

Upside-down situation

The relationship between Sandra and Samuel is very present. As more and more women move out of the home and pursue self-fulfillment with men, many women, like Sandra, have achieved more than their husbands and earned higher incomes. The division of labour in the family has also changed, with some men becoming the main bearers of family affairs. The relationship between "strong women and weak men" is becoming more and more common in real life.

Data show that in the past 30 years, the number of stay-at-home fathers in the United States has almost doubled due to the economic downturn, and the proportion of stay-at-home fathers in other countries such as the United Kingdom and South Korea has also increased significantly. In the mainland, the topic of stay-at-home dads is also constantly being discussed on the Internet.

In this process, after a large number of first-hand people's feelings and stories, a view began to be more and more widely recognized: in the previous relationship between husband and wife, there was an overlooked contribution of the one who took care of the family.

In the Japanese drama "Escape is Shameful but Useful", the heroine Minori Moriyama and the male protagonist Tsuzaki Heikuang form a contract marriage and earn income by being a full-time housewife in Tsuzaki Heikuashi's house. She calculated that the time a full-time housewife worked unpaid for 2,199 hours a year, which translates into an adult income of more than 3 million yen. At the exchange rate at the time, it was equivalent to about 200,000 RMB.

图 | 《逃避虽可耻但有用》剧照

After the writer Maori's husband, Chen Huaxing, became a stay-at-home father, and like Samuel, he felt that his personal time was being eroded by household chores. Before he quit his job, he fantasized that he could swim four times a week, and when he became a stay-at-home dad, he realized that it was almost impossible to spare an entire hour of free time in the afternoon. The daytime was crowded with trivial chores, and it was only at half past ten in the evening that the child went to sleep that he was truly free.

For Chen Huaxing, a full-time father is also a profession. In 2018, he resigned and went home, and his wife Maori continued to pay him a salary of 20,000 yuan a month according to his annual salary of 300,000 yuan at that time.

It is rare to find a family like the writer Mori who has the consciousness and ability to use money and emotions to give economic value to unpaid housework. In most ordinary households, one person's salary income is likely to support the family's expenses, let alone provide financial recognition for the other person's housework.

Compared with quantifiable economic income, the value of housework has not been universally recognized in society. Simon Kuznets, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971, wrote a study on the cost-of-living index and wondered whether unpaid domestic work and care should be included in the official statistics. Eventually, Simon gave up on not having a reliable basis to estimate their value. To this day, the United States still uses the national income accounting process, which still excludes unpaid labor such as housework.

In the family structure of modern human society, for a long time in the past, domestic labor was mainly attached to women. The unpaid labor of the family, which was once attached to women, is relegated to a secondary position like the second gender.

Wealth-creating work is seen as primary. People with higher economic incomes occupy more positions of power in the traditional marriage structure, which is mostly occupied by men.

Dilemmas always devour both genders as one and the same. Men who have been encouraged to pursue career success are unable to gain value recognition in housework, and they often fall into the loss of social identity.

In the five or six years since he was a stay-at-home father, the 34-year-old Zhang Hui's range of activities has become narrower and narrower. He doesn't have time to socialize with his former friends and colleagues. Occasionally, he doesn't fit in fully at a party, and when others talk about work, it's hard for him to talk about his work at home naturally. It is also difficult for Zhang Hui to integrate into the new circle, and whenever he takes his children to play in the community, he has to stay away from the elderly, nannies and full-time housewives who get together. He was afraid of the judgmental gaze that fell on him. He is always looking for a suitable side hustle in hopes of rediscovering his place in society.

The traditional concept of "male dominance, female dominance" not only frames men, but also firmly binds motherhood to women. Family responsibilities remain the default responsibility of women. During the pandemic, twice as many women as men quit their jobs because their children were taking online classes at home. In the harsh judgment of society, women with successful careers must take care of their families in order to avoid criticism.

Under the discipline of society, women are constantly self-reflective and affirm their value in the family. The anxiety of motherhood, which is difficult to unload, is also partly passed on to their partners.

Women are a situation. When men fall into this situation, the same hardship haunts them.

When the child was 4 months old, Wang Jin's wife had the opportunity to transfer to the headquarters to work and get better treatment. In order to support his wife and reduce the financial burden on the family, Wang Jin began to work at night and take care of children during the day. Rotating all day long, Wang Jin can only meet the basic needs of the children, and can't spare more effort to realize his wife's requirements for the children's education. Unable to bear her husband's lack of motivation in children's education, Wang Jin's wife quit her job in the rising period and returned home to develop.

Losing a job opportunity, the wife became sensitive and irritable. When she heard the news of her former colleague's promotion, her emotions fluctuated. She complained that Wang Jin couldn't help her child's homework and that the child was not taken care of. The relationship between husband and wife became more and more strained, and eventually broke down.

Gender roles are reversed, the value system is also misplaced, and their efforts and efforts are difficult to embed into the mainstream value standards of society, so they can only continue to increase the weight at both ends of the relationship balance and demand fairness from each other.

Unbalanced intimacy, the struggle for power

"I want you to see, maybe our relationship is a little bit unbalanced. Why is this so hard to discuss?" shouted Samuel, who was at a disadvantage in the relationship, in the midst of the argument. He hopes Sandra will face up to their unbalanced relationship.

Such a cry also appeared in the reality show "Goodbye Lover 3". Ji Huanbo is ten years older than Wang Shiqing and has always played a leading role in the relationship. As a model, he believes that he has accumulated more experience, so he has been guiding Wang Shiqing's dressing style and controlling her career choice. As Wang Shiqing grows older and her career matures, she wants more and more to get rid of such control and grasp autonomy. And the way she got rid of control was to replicate the same control relationship in Ji Huanbo.

The two, who once worked together on the international catwalk, became rivals in their intimate relationship, vying for power.

Whether it is in front of the other two couples or in front of Wang Shiqing's mother, both parties constantly emphasize their efforts and deny each other. The same thing takes on different looks from their respective perspectives. The number of times the dishes are washed, the distribution of household chores, and the different views on the career are all piled up in front of the camera, hoping to get a fair trial to pronounce the final winner.

A netizen on Douban once commented on the relationship between "strong women and weak men", believing that there is only one possibility for this relationship to be happy: "Don't want to be men on both sides." "Men here do not refer to biological sex, but to the position of the male who holds power. The reality is that both parties in this relationship want to be "men", but neither of them can do so.

In an intimate relationship, once the power balance is lost, there may be a scene where the two parties are fighting to become the superior.

The self that has been deliberately suppressed for a long time by the dispowered, there will always be a time to rebound and swell. The original voluntary efforts and compromises have become weapons and bargaining chips in the struggle for power, and they have evoked grievances buried deep in their hearts. Those in power cannot let go of vested conveniences, and those who have lost power want to fight for more space for autonomy. Both sides are fighting on their own, unwilling and unable to understand each other's situation.

Love is worn out in the process of attacking and fighting each other. As Han Byung-chul explains in "The Death of Love": Love is put on the verge of death by individualism, that is, the necessity of putting everything on the market, a logic that can define the selfish behavior of all individuals in today's society.

Figure | Stills from "Working Mom Parenting Dad".

The purpose of Fu Seoul and Liu Yi to record "Goodbye Lover 3" is to confirm whether there is still love between each other and whether there is a way for this relationship to continue.

This 14-year marriage relationship seems peaceful and happy, but for Fu Seoul and Liu Yi, it is full of hidden pain.

Fu Seoul's success in acting career made her the breadwinner of the family, and Liu Yi became a "full-time husband". When Fu Seoul's career development went further, in 2019, the family moved from Hefei to Shanghai, Liu Yi no longer had to worry about his livelihood, but he also said that he felt that he was not needed in the family. On the birthday card to Fu Seoul, Liu Yi did not talk about love, he wrote: "Help you fly high." In his eyes, his wife's achievements are all earned by personal efforts, and he is not qualified to share them.

Liu Yi said that he had lost his enthusiasm for life. He couldn't find the meaning of his existence, and he couldn't tell about his loss, so he wrapped himself in a hard and heavy shell, no longer revealing his needs, and everything was to cooperate with Fu Seoul and this family first. The longer the ego is suppressed, the more cold and numb the person becomes, and he no longer provides emotional value to his wife.

Fu Seoul pursues self-success, and also hopes that Liu Yi can taste the happiness of self-realization. She encouraged her husband to develop hobbies and write scripts. But in the observation and analysis of the guests on the show, Fu Seoul ignored one point: these growth are all identified by her value orientation. For her husband Liu Yi, what is trapped at this stage of his life, and where should he start to "grow and break through". Fu Seoul, who was determined to rush forward, failed to understand Liu Yi's depression, and often hated iron but not steel.

In the final self-talk session of "Goodbye Lover 3", Fu Seoul confessed that she had thought about whether she would be happier if she was not such an ambitious person.

Both the man who has lost his power and the woman who has gained it are lost in intimate relationships and cannot find their way. One side is ignored, the other side is denied, and both sides find it difficult to understand and appreciate the needs of the other, so they can only drift away. The love is still there, but the relationship has become a burden for both of them.

Scholar Dai Jinhua once said: "When everything is encouraging us to be victors and winners, all weakness, including the weakness of women and the weakness of men, all the contempt and the logic of trampling on the loser seem to become a necessity." ”

Patriarchal societies internalize "admiration for strength" and "fear of weakness" in social norms, and intimate relationships have become a gladiatorial arena for power. Everyone has the potential to be a victim of being devoured by it.

- END -

Written by Yang Xiaoqian

Editor|Wen Lihong