"Love Syndrome": Don't talk about love and talk about the world

"Love Syndrome": Don't talk about love and talk about the world

"Love Syndrome" is a Thai film that was exhibited at the 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival. The film is based on director Apichatpon Welashagu's own childhood memories, when both parents were doctors. The female doctor in the film treats the villagers and monks who come to the village hospital for treatment, she is in love with the owner of an orchid farm, at the same time, a doctor practicing in a city hospital falls in love with her, and between him and him, there is an unusual emotional exchange, and the director shows the delicate emotions of the characters in the usual long shots.

The biggest feature of "Love Syndrome" is that the same character has different avatars, and the different choices of the characters in the story make the double story line with similar starting points go farther and farther. In the film, Apichatpong uses a large number of long shots and almost stagnant camera movements to record the trivial dialogues of the characters in detail and delicacy, resulting in a sense of lengthy time. But dialogues in similar scenes in parallel worlds give people a very different sense of fast and slow rhythm. The relationship between the two parallel worlds is directly introduced through the mirror reproduction, and if the reincarnation of "one hundred years" in the title is used to explain, the changes brought to life by this hundred years may be the center of the film.

There are many similar scenes in the film that echo and contrast, and all the elements seem to be divided into two, and they all have their own dual bodies or mirror images. The words and sentences in the lines and the actions of the characters themselves have no special meaning, but the director uses such a completely mirrored scene scheduling to let the absentees in the dual relationship appear. For example, in the first half of the doctor-patient relationship is closer and gentler; in the second half, it is much more indifferent, both sides fail to think from each other's point of view, neglect to communicate, the little monk gave up the attempt to seek medicine, and when giving medicine, he said bluntly "Enhance the heart of treating all things well... Stay away from the futile of the mind", can not but be said to be a kind of irony. The above comparison highlights the cold and desolate modern social characteristics of the parallel world in the second half, and it is clear that in the first half, the green that symbolizes vitality is the main color, and the director's scheduling takes care of the quiet and beautiful natural environment of the hospital all the time, and the background sound is often rich in birdsong.

Between two parallel worlds, the Buddha statue in the first half and the portrait sculpture in the second half are the key clues, the object of exchange between the two sides of the mirror, both the connector and its destroyer of the binary relationship. The three portrait sculptures on the high platform are shot with low-angle lenses, and you have to look up to highlight the tall and majestic shore of the portrait. Such scenes are both intermediaries of spatial transformation and the transience and eternity of time from contrast: the calm Buddha statue has remained unchanged over a hundred years and has maintained its uniqueness; the great man (king) who is lifted to the altar is temporary, and there is a forgotten brought about by the change of generations and the passage of time, so it is necessarily not the only one. The king symbolizes the order of a nation and society, the physical symbol of the desires of the Great Other. In the second half of time and space, the passages in the basement are strange, and various mechanical forging sounds allude to mechanical modern life. Towards the end of the film, the black hole-like pipes and smoke are striking. The close-up of the camera freezes to the mouth of the pitch-black cave for more than a minute, and at first the opening is just pitch black, and after six seconds it seems that the machine starts, and the black hole begins to quickly swallow up the smoke that fills the room, and the milky white smoke disappears into the depths of the black hole in a whirlwind. The dark circular opening corresponds to the eclipse of the first half of time and space, the difference is that the story of the eclipse is intended to warn people that divine punishment is everywhere and therefore do not be greedy, and the black hole connecting the pipe is a representative of modern society, mechanized mass production. From a symbolic point of view, the pipe implies the meaning of "time tunnel", and the smoke represents all the dust-like personnel in the world, and time and space engulf everything, turning into nothingness, returning to the concept of "emptiness". Or maybe the two parts of space-time before and after are non-existent, and come to an end here.

The various possible open-ended interpretations give life to "Love Syndrome" and also give the audience a rethinking of the role of time in the film. The 16 shots behind the black hole seem to be a new beginning after the end of the first two parallel spaces, and this kind of film feeling that varies from person to person is like this in the author's opinion: after smoking from the black hole, the content in the shot gradually becomes lively from static to moving, from sitting quietly on a bench to watching the scenery to large-scale jumping aerobics, which is of course people's adaptation and integration of modernity, but also shows mechanical and homogeneous in joy. Compared with the time and space of a hundred years ago, when people exercised, they said that "slowly squatting up, tenacing my knees", we can perceive Apichatpong's reflections and insights on modernity. The pairs of mirrored situations represented in the parallel world are a reflection of the characteristics of the real world at present, and in such reproductions, heterogeneous psychological reality surfaces. Where will the basement with no lawns, no rice paddies, and no orchids in parallel space-time be demolished, directed, and nihilized, and where will all this lead humanity? I can't imagine it.

Shen Yuxiao/Wen