Movie: "Chasing the Moon"
Genre: Drama, Family, Drama
Director: Qiao Liang
Screenwriter: Qiao Liang
Starring: He Saifei, Yuan Wenkang, Lou Yujian, Tu Ling, Gao Zifeng
Release date: March 8, 2024
The movie "Chasing the Moon" is hard to watch.
Even if the leading actor He Saifei won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actress, even if the current Yue Opera actor Chen Lijun is out of the circle because of "New Dragon Gate Inn", the topic of traditional Yue Opera is rising, but it does not prevent "Chasing the Moon" from being a not very good-looking movie.
Where is the ugliness?
The dialect is difficult to understand, and you have to read the subtitles.
The filming techniques such as screens, transitions, and camera movements are like TV dramas, not movies.
Reminiscing about the past in the way of a stage play, interpolating the narration, seems to be some kind of innovative technique, but I feel inexplicable.
The protagonist Mr. Qi "criticizes" the character design, and the rest of the characters are tool people.
The plot jumps stiffly and forcibly has a happy ending.
The movie "Chasing the Moon" is adapted from Ai Wei's novel "The Past", which tells the story of Yue Opera star Qi who became popular all over the stage with the song "Running to the Moon" when he was young, and did not hesitate to sacrifice his family for the sake of his career, resulting in the disappearance of his husband and the breakup of his children, until he found out that he was seriously ill and returned to his hometown to seek forgiveness from his children.
The most interesting thing about "Chasing the Moon" is the "negative character" Teacher Qi, her children Lin Qiusheng, Lin Xiasheng, and Lin Dongmei are scribbled like their names, and they are the tool people in the movie, and they exist in order to set off Teacher Qi's "crazy criticism" character. Teacher Qi, who is as crazy as in the play, has a lot of people in reality, regardless of whether it is a man or a woman, if you want to have a career, you will inevitably owe it to your family, which is an unsolvable problem. People can choose to forgive or not, and in the end, the injured person has to lick their wounds silently.
Teacher Qi has two sets of skins in front of and behind. In the last second, he said in tears that his life was not easy, and the next second he was immediately radiant when he saw outsiders. When it comes to acting, when I see a good script, I am addicted to drama, I guide the actors to act regardless of the occasion, and perform in the canteen, although it is too strict, but her guidance is right. The troupe invited Mr. Qi to be the consultant of the new play, and when he saw a good script, he secretly drugged the heroine on the eve of the premiere, deceived his colleagues, and played the leading role himself.
Teacher Qi in life is like a white chi, thinking that Lin Xiasheng likes to eat sweet, so he puts more sugar in the dishes. Lin Qiusheng accused Teacher Qi of ruining the happiness of the family and the future of his children, and Teacher Qi shrank into a ball as if he was very aggrieved, saying that it was not easy for him to be an actor, and he couldn't remember how he ignored and abused the children at that time, except for thinking of sending some money home, he didn't care about anything else.
Teacher Qi has been playing since elementary school, lacks parental care, is extremely selfish, and has no concept of family affection. found a man who could write a script and was good to her to get married, but she didn't cherish it, and continued to look for a man after her husband disappeared, and she said that she couldn't find such a good man anymore. She was busy with her career back then, so she asked a female colleague, Zhuang Lingling, to help take care of the children. came and went, Lin Xia grew up and became an actor in the troupe, and secretly fell in love with Zhuang Lingling. Lin Dongmei and a married man were pregnant, and Qiusheng led her sister to ask her mother for help, but Teacher Qi asked the children to solve it by themselves in order to prepare for the performance. Lin Qiusheng had a bright future, but in order to give his sister grievances, he was imprisoned for several years, and his sister was stimulated and went crazy directly.
As an actress, it is understandable that Mr. Qi used wigs and heavy makeup to cover her sick face for her image. However, as a mother, she has done so many things that are sorry for her family, what kind of psychological motivation is she to come back to reconcile with her children? Could it be that the children's emotionless wood has been waiting for their mother to come back and love themselves? Of course not.
All the members tried to complete the transition from deep hatred to deep mother-son love in the split plot, Lin Qiusheng who was domineering president Fan'er, Lin Xiasheng who was weak and infatuated, and Teacher Qi who performed crazy life with strength, three different performance styles, each acting in its own way, intermittent acting skills exploded, saying that it was broken, and that it was reconciled. Intermittent plot split, Mr. Qi suddenly broke through the conspiracy of others to hire a murderer to kill Lin Qiusheng, and was able to counterkill the murderer, suddenly took off the wig and was covered in blood, and asked Lin Xiasheng to send her to turn herself in, which was very inexplicable.
In order to echo the beginning and end of the plot and forcibly echo it, in the early years, Mr. Qi's husband wrote "Chasing the Moon", which made Mr. Qi popular, and then became a monk, and later wrote a new script and sent it to the troupe. Mr. Qi relied on the opportunity to make the heroine's debut by taking drugs, and was shaped into an "alternative reunion" for the couple.
The creator must have made a lot of preparations in order to shoot this scene well, and the heroine being able to win the Golden Rooster Award is enough to prove a lot of problems. However, this is a congenital "underdeveloped" movie, with many highlights, such as opera themes, female images, negative roles, etc., but it was not unified together, the only thing that can be seen is that He Saifei brought the role of "Teacher Qi" to the sky.