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Manuel Puig, a Latin American writer who has influenced many writers and directors, has incorporated music and film into his novels in the style of collage, stream of consciousness, and polygon, presenting a montage of desire, a puzzle game of love and fate. And years later, Wong Kar-wai found something he could fall into.
Written by Xia Ming-ho
Published in the Literary Newspaper on April 25, 2024
1
The town of General Viegas, Pampas, Argentina.
It is a small inland town in South America, far from the mountains, the sea, and the capital. Although the postmark states that it belongs to the "Province of Buenos Aires", it has nothing to do with the glittering metropolis and the federal city of the same name as the province – rather, it is a deserted place.
The barrenness of General Town has a lot to do with its sandy soil. In Manuel Puig's recollections, it was a "place where there was nothing", and it was there that he spent his childhood. But like those plants that can survive in the desert, a sensitive, often out of place child, can find his own spiritual world in a barren town—the cinema.
He went to see movies, the first being The Bride of Frankenstein. It was the golden age of Hollywood's major studios, the star system was booming, a series of film actors were deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and among the stars, the childhood Puig had a soft spot for Rita Hayworth. Going to the cinema every Wednesday afternoon became a regular event for Puig, like Mallarmé on the Pampas, where a party of literati and writers was held on Tuesday afternoons – except that the young Puig was greeted by a full screen of Ambilight. There is no doubt that there is an element of escapism in this activity, and it is the father who drags him back to reality, who he believes that the son always follows his mother to the love movies, which is a sign of lack of manhood. But movies still became the love of Puig's life. It is said that in a certain apartment where he lived as an adult, there was a collection of more than 3,000 movies on discs.
Manuel Puig
There was no secondary school in Generaltown, so Puig was sent to a boarding school in Buenos Aires. There, he was exposed to psychoanalytic theories and understood that the complex mental activity of human beings belongs to both the conscious and the unconscious. Later, in the novel "Red Lips", he tried to use broken words to describe the bubble-like fragments of thoughts that were about to emerge from the unconscious to the consciousness.
He entered the Faculty of Architecture, studied for only six months before transferring to the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, and after graduating, he went to look for a job on a film set, but unsuccessfully, went to serve in the military. It seems that there is no realm to which his heart belongs. Then, he finally decided to heed his heart's call and traveled to Rome to study filmmaking.
The shock he received in Europe was all-encompassing. The main aspect is that the Hollywood films that nourished his imagination and curiosity since childhood were abandoned by Europeans. It was the era of Italian neorealism, and in Europe after World War II, filmmakers wanted to carry their cameras out on the streets and make films that were truly "intervening" in reality, rather than Hollywood-style singing and dancing.
Until 1962, he was still working as an assistant director on the set, but all he received was disappointment after disappointment, and the door of the film industry did not open to him. In order to earn a living, he began to do every possible job: washing dishes in restaurants, teaching Spanish and Italian, and working as a clerk in an airline. But at the same time, he was still trying to write film scripts. One day, however, he found himself writing a script that far exceeded the length of time a movie could have been filmed — or rather, the "script" he was writing was not a script at all.
So he finally realized that his own might be a different path.
In 1963, he moved to New York to continue writing the "play," which would later become his first novel: The Betrayal of Rita Hayworth.
The betrayal of Rita Hayworth was a huge success: Galimard received the French rights to the work, and Le Monde named it the best novel of the year – a "strange thing" that has never been seen in the literary world. The novel is very experimental in nature, incorporating a lot of the usual writing methods found in film scripts. In his second novel, Red Lips, this style is further strengthened: a fortune-telling, a police file, and a drama from a radio play...... can be part of the plot of the novel. After the era of the "literary explosion" in Latin America passed, Puig once again proved the creativity of Spanish literature with his "literary montage".
In his youth without a clear sign, Puig's escape began silently. After the age of 18, he never returned to his hometown of General Viegas, and after leaving Argentina, he lived in Rome, Paris, London, Stockholm, Mexico, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Cuernavaca, until he became a handful of ashes.
The Betrayal of Rita Hayworth
"Red Lips" (recently published by Guangxi Normal University Press)
2
There are many legends about Wong Kar-wai, and many facts are also well-known. But his fascination with Manuel Puig is rarely written about in the world. In an interview, he bluntly said: "The South American writer who influenced me the most was the author who wrote "Kiss of the Spider Woman" (Manuel Puig). So far, he has had the biggest influence on my filmmaking. The best is the original novel. But his best work is not "Kiss of the Spider Woman", his best work is "Sad Tango", a great work. I haven't seen any great works since him. ”
It was Tan Jiaming, who is also a director, who recommended him to read Puig's novels. Originally known as "Boquitas Pintadas" (Red Lips) in Spanish and "Heartbreak Tango" in English, this novel set the tone for many of Wong Kar-wai's later films. Ten tango songs, serialized in sixteen chapters of magazines, the theme of which is popular love between men and women, but the style is extremely striking.
The montage that Puig learns from the film is not turned into an image in his own creation, but is developed on Wong Kar-wai's film. Juan Carlos, the protagonist in "Red Lips", also became incarnate in the image of Leslie Cheung in "The True Story of A Fei" (this is the first time, and there will be a second and third time in the future). In the novel, he is a beautiful man suffering from tuberculosis. A disease, until there is an effective cure, will always be occupied by metaphors - Susan Sontag points this point out in "The Metaphor of Disease": tuberculosis has always been a disease that adds color to beauty in the pre-penicillin era, like Shih Tzu's heart. But his heart is not soft: Juan Carlos lingers among his three lovers, Neni, Di Carlo, and Mabel, living a chaotic and uninhibited life, but he also pays the price of his life due to the gradual progression of his illness. The feminine appearance and the inner violence make for a charming character with conflict.
This is where the metaphor of the footless bird comes in: it can only fly, but it cannot rest. This is Wong Kar-wai's nostalgia and Puig's wandering. In Wong Kar-wai's films, Shanghainese and Hong Kong dialects are often accessible conversations, and the local accent is the only link, constantly reminding that this place is a foreign country.
Puig is also a footless bird. He gained a reputation as a novelist on the world stage and even received praise from the film industry for the successful adaptation of "Kiss of the Spider Woman". Even so, he faced a triple betrayal of the Spanish-speaking world, his native Argentina, and his hometown of General Viegas: from the beginning, the publisher in Barcelona refused to publish his novels, the writer Llosa threatened to resign, and firmly opposed the Argentine who wrote the plot of popular soap operas to enter the literary palace; during Peron's reign, his works were banned in Argentina for "pornographic content", and he even received death threats in Mexico, as "Red Lips" and "The Betrayal of Rita Hayworth" Set in the context of both novels, "Colonel Vallejos" is used in opposition to its prototype, "General Viegas", where his neighbors and parents are affected by the plot of the novel. Puig is accused of leaking the privacy of the townspeople in the novel and becomes persona non grata in his hometown.
In the sixth chapter of Red Lips, the gypsy woman uses tarot cards to reveal where Juan Carlos' heart belongs—that there is no belonging.
3
Wong Kar-wai and Puig have one thing in common: the plot is not important, the style is important. Johnny To even asserted to the extreme: Wong Kar-wai actually only made a movie "The True Story of A Fei".
At the end of "The True Story of A Fei", Tony Leung's appearance is an ambiguous signal: this story has not been filmed yet, but it ends here for the time being. This powerful potential has been translated into many Wong Kar-wai films with Tony Leung as the protagonist in the future. In these films, Puig is like a ghost hanging in the sky, constantly exuding his powerful dominance over the image. However, there is a subtle change: the violent beautiful man withdraws and is replaced by a character who also lacks a fulcrum, but prefers to fit into the daily life and find shelter. Tony Leung is more like Wong Kar-wai's own incarnation.
"Springtime" constitutes a kind of metaphor in creation. He Baorong is Juan Carlos, Manuel Puig, a footless bird who can't settle down. Although Lai Yaohui also lost his way in Buenos Aires, he learned to live with loneliness and a sense of belonging in front of the waterfall to reconcile with the lack of belonging. And Zhang Wan is a family person, he already has the ability to get a sense of belonging, and he will not really be out of place anywhere - this is in stark contrast to Li Yaohui's groping. Later, in "The Grandmaster", in Ip Man and Yi Tian, this contrast was once again revealed. And then there's "Flowers". Wong Kar-wai finally released the nostalgia that had enveloped his life since he was five years old. Of course, all those who return to their hometown in order to relieve their nostalgia will find without exception: the hometown in memory is irretrievable. Fortunately, the creative image can reflect an entire primordial world that exists only in the imagination.
Juan Carlos appears to have disappeared from Wong Kar-wai's film with Leslie Cheung. But many years later, his figure appeared again in "Flowers". Po is a new persona, less violent, but still a wonderful conflict: a gentle smile and an elegant tone on the outside, but a green and cold on the inside—and he has never loved anyone. In "Flowers", Reiko accuses Po of putting the Sanyang card in Tokyo at night to lure her to make a mistake - seemingly vexatious. In fact, from Bao's point of view, before he did this, he didn't predict that Lingzi (with Linghong, Tao Tao, and Teacher Ge) would meet Qian Yankai and buy and sell - what he wanted was the kind of need that the people around him had created trouble and he had to come out to save the scene. This self-directed and self-acted play is always false, the truth is: Reiko and him don't understand each other, but because fate meets, they accidentally get together to keep warm.
From an indomitable escape, to a longing for stability, to a loneliness that cannot be discharged. The great loneliness of life crystallizes in the process of combining positive and negative topics.
Stills from "Flowers".
For an adapted screenplay, the relationship between the TV series version of "Flowers" and the original book is thin. However, if you compare "Red Lips" and "Flowers", you will see a striking similarity in the character structure of the two stories: Juan Carlos is not only Ah Fei, but also Ah Bao.
Po has three women by his side: Reiko, Miss Wang, and Li Li, and Juan Carlos has three women around him: Mabel, Neni, and Di Carlo. Po has a good brother Tao Tao by his side, Tao Tao and his sister-in-law have an affair with him, and Juan Carlos has a Pan Cho by his side, and Pan Cho has the maid Rava to give birth to an illegitimate child. Po's memory is a "white moonlight" that turns into a "rice grain" - Xuezhi, and in "Red Lips", there is an unnamed innocent girl who is seduced by Juan Carlos......
Peeling back the cocoon, you will find that Wong Kar-wai is true when he says that "Red Lips" is indeed a great novel in his mind, and its characters and plots run through his world of images. Even if the Latin American style of unrestrainedness is finally replaced by the Chinese style of restraint, the clues of the surging emotions are still leaked like spring. The "tango" that Li Li and Ah Bao danced in the rain, pulling three steps and turning around, made people can't stop moving. That heartwarming feeling can be traced back to the first sentence of the inscription at the beginning of "Red Lips", which is a quote from the lyrics of the famous tango song "Cuesta Abajo": "For me...... It's the ...... of my life" Gong Er saw Ip Man for the last time and said: "It is said that there are no regrets in life, that is a gamble, if there are really no regrets, how boring it should be." ”
Since the serialization, the chapter titles of "Red Lips" have not been the traditional chapters 1, 2, and 3, but the first "Entrega", the second "Entrega", and the third "Entrega". The word is difficult to translate literally, because it describes a certain inexplicable spirituality in tango, a beauty of depravity that gives oneself over in its entirety.
It all started on that Wednesday afternoon: when the young Puig sat in the cinema, he found something he could fall into, and always saw it as a means of confronting reality. Years later, Wong Kar-wai was also found.
New Media Editor: He Jing
Pictured: Photo.com
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