Introduction: There is an old French saying called C'est la vie, which means this, is life.
Mia Hansen-Løve has emerged as a cutting-edge female director in recent years at major film festivals in France and around the world with her meticulous and poetic images and philosophical expressions. Most of her film inspiration comes from what she has seen and heard in life, and her parents' background as a philosophy teacher brings more speculative color to her films.
The film "Things to come" is based on the director's observation of the marriage of the parents as the source of creation, from the perspective of a woman, telling the story of a philosophical female teacher who finds peace through the midlife crisis in the many unhappiness of life.
The film may seem unfriendly to audiences without a certain philosophical foundation, and is filled with a great deal of discussion of philosophers, ideas, and doctrines. It is undeniable that if the audience has some understanding of the ideas and characters discussed in the film, it is helpful to explore the hearts of the characters and to perceive the director's thinking, but it is not impossible to just think of these terms as the emergence of a newspaper name, because what really moves people in the film is an insight into the truth of life and the elegant and forbearing female arc in it.
The film opens with a crisp and highly disciplined woman, the heroine Natalie's pace is always very fast, whether it is to pull students back to the classroom from the crowd of the student movement, or to take care of home life in an orderly manner after work, or to be disturbed by depressed and anxious old mothers at any time, Natalie's posture in life always makes people feel rushed and efficient.
But in the face of such complicated trivialities of life, Natalie did not stop reading and thinking, perhaps for a philosophy teacher to say that reading and thinking has become the norm in her life, but this thinking is on the other side of her spiritual world. From this, natalie's life can be divided into two levels, one is the apparent world composed of material and social relations, and the other is the spiritual will of the female personality and life speculation.
Chinese, forty know the destiny of fifty is not confused, Natalie into middle age from the work of the family pressure becomes more and more heavy, affected by the market, Natalie's publishing has become very difficult, the publisher explained that the cover design and content has no longer attracted the group, which makes Natalie feel that she is in a kind of ebb and flow of the times, but she does not feel extremely anxious because of the crisis brought about by age, in the face of the flesh and blood student movement, she still calmly replied that her energy and hot pillow for work have not retreated.
What really made her start to ripple in her life was actually from her husband, what marriage means to a woman, is it a love commitment, maybe for Natalie she once thought so. After decades of marriage, she was very surprised when her husband personally told her that he had cheated on her. On the surface, Natalie's response has achieved a very decent tolerance, she did not choose to quarrel or lower her posture, but in her tough rhetorical questions, you can still see Natalie's emotional anger and unwillingness.
Natalie is a principled person who at the same time retains the romance of a French woman, and after the divorce she regrets the cottage by the sea and the well-tended garden, but she angrily throws the flowers that her husband puts on the table in the trash. Before and after marriage, Natalie's life and identity changed dramatically. Before marriage, she had many labels, wife, mother, daughter, teacher, these labels put Natalie in one ring after another of life, for her freedom is precious and secret.
And when the marriage is extinguished, the mother is dead, the children form a new family, she no longer needs to run for other roles, time and money can be at her disposal, and how can she find her own life in the face of the continuous approaching age.
Freedom brought her a sense of weightlessness for a while, and she turned to her proud protégé in difficult times. The students brought her not only a leisurely life, but also a refutatory inspiration. Whoever needs to be relied upon does not represent the deprivation of independence, and Natalie also needs someone at such a stage of life who can bring her inner comfort. When she lay on the sunny hillside and listened to the ballads in the car, those moments of freedom were fragrant, but whenever the night came, and the passing of life crept up to her heart again, Natalie still couldn't help but cry.
Natalie has been philosophical all her life and has searched for truth in many philosophies, but when the weight of life is really weighed down, it seems that all reason and philosophy have lost their proper role, philosophies falsify each other, and pain is only pain. The softness and strength of women are fully displayed in the performance and narrative, which is also one of the most delicate female expressions of the director in this film.
The film also has no shortage of philosophical metaphors through some imagery. The image of the black cat in this film corresponds to Natalie's self-mapping, the black cat is domesticated, but in fact placed in a void cage, when it leaves the environment on which it depends and returns to nature, its nature may be awakened or perish in a new challenge, and so does Natalie, who needs to redefine herself and her life. Time gradually passed, and Natalie gave the black cat to her reassuring students, which also meant that the anxiety that confused her gradually found a home.
At least life has solved some of her problems, at the end of the film is already a grandmother Natalie holding her grandson to coax her to sleep, a wall separating the psychological situation of two generations, Natalie may already know that life is constantly new problems appear, and will be slowly resolved through various ways, sometimes even in an unsolved way.
Running out of a label will once again walk into the label, walking into freedom from crowds may not be happy, and withdrawing from freedom may not be embarrassing. Independence and freedom are always relative, and these noble qualities will make women no matter how old they can maintain a strong and elegant, you ask what life is, life is like this, it has no fixed mold but essentially the same, the film uses such a weighty way to let us see the face of life, but also tell people that women's elegance will never be lost because of age and others.