Introduction: "Exchange your heart for my skin." ”
"Painted Skin 2" is an oriental magic film directed by Ur Shan, written by Ran Ping and Ran Jianan, and starring Zhao Wei, Zhou Xun and Chen Kun. The film is composed of three story lines intertwined, telling the story of the fox demon Xiao Wei who violated the rules of the demon world and spent five hundred years in the cold hell. After escaping from the ice cave, in order to become a mortal to survive, Xiao Wei must find a person who is willing to truly dedicate his true heart. Xiao Wei searched hard in the human world until she met Princess Jing with a golden mask. When she discovered that Princess Jing had a crush on Huo Xin, she planned to seduce Huo Xin. She instilled in Princess Jing that a man's love for a woman is nothing more than lustful love, suggesting that the ugliness of the princess's appearance is the only reason why Huo Xin dare not accept the princess's love, and wants to persuade Princess Jing to exchange skin bags with herself, so as to achieve the purpose of "exchanging your heart for my skin".
Princess Jing gave her heart to Xiao Wei in order to get the love of General Huo, and Xiao Wei returned her face to Princess Jing, so that Princess Jing had Xiao Wei's face and loved Huo Xin, and Xiao Wei took Princess Jing's heart and became a person to go and kiss. However, Xiao Wei did not expect that the main person who Jing Gong married was the Prince of The Wolf, and this wedding with the dead was to be sacrificed with the heart of Princess Jing, and the dark and vicious nature of the Heavenly Wolf Guoshi and the hypocritical strength of the Queen of the Heavenly Wolf Kingdom made Xiao Wei and Princess Jing's heart extremely dangerous. Huo Xin, who learned the truth, in order to help Princess Jing find her body, led the guards to the altar and defused the crisis. The film breaks through the shackles of the theme of popular people's love, and sublimates the theme to the conflict between appearance and heart.
The semioticist Mytz pointed out in The Signifier of Imagination: "Since cinema is inherently illusory, it is described as "imaginary" and "fictional", and when this "imagination" acts on the psychology of the audience, the audience can produce perceptual activities that are more real than reality." "The golden mask, as a special image in the film, plays an important role in the narrative. In the play, Princess Jing, played by Zhao Wei, has been wearing a half-golden mask on her face, and the mask has always been considered a mysterious element in Chinese culture, such as in ancient historical figures, The Lanling King used a vicious mask to cover his handsome face to deter the enemy.
The feminine face of Princess Jing, played by Zhao Wei, wears a cold and hard golden mask, which makes the image of the character mysterious and inviolable feeling spontaneously emerge, and the intricate pattern of the golden mask vaguely reveals the feminine feminine atmosphere, and at the same time has a mysterious and exotic emotional tone. This visual element not only conforms to the overall color collocation of the characters, but also a traction for the entire plot, and the audience can't help but be curious when they see such a visual shape, closely following the plot of the movie. In the second half of the film, Zhao Wei removes the mask, and the truth under the mask finally surfaces, and the naked scar covers half of the face in a shocking and vicious way, which finally satisfies the audience's "imagination" on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is also a climax of the movie.
Fox demon Xiaowei in the image of the main white, in the general cognition of only the elderly will have a white hair, such a shape is more visual and more convincing, visually has the role of leading the audience's aesthetics, so that the audience believes that it is a fox demon that has suffered from the torture of the thousand-year-old cold area. As a demon who wants to win the hearts of the people, although she is a seducer, she is also an observer and a beggar, she is observing the psychological changes of Princess Jing, observing the emotional interaction between Princess Jing and Huo Xin, and waiting for the opportunity to persuade Princess Jing to voluntarily give her heart.
When Xiao Wei talks in front of the mirror: men only care about women's skin. During the whole process, Zhou Xun's facial expression hardly changed, but he looked at Princess Jing with plain, almost empty eyes, looked at the portrait in the mirror, and used a low, soft tone to seduce Princess Jing into willingly trading with it. When Princess Jing asked, "Are you a demon?" Xiao Wei was still expressionless, but his face was slightly raised, his eyes were oblique, and his voice was cold: "That's right." Then she explained that there was no way for a person to change her appearance, and a hint of mockery slid across her cheek: "But I have a way", because of her desire for the human heart, she showed a little eagerness. She whispered in Princess Jing's ear, smearing the whole scene with a dreamy and mysterious flavor.
Huo Xin, played by Chen Kun, subverted the previous facial image and appeared on the big screen as a tough general. As an emotionally introverted general, his costumes are mostly dark red and black, the hair that is scattered down also adds a lot of cold and mature taste, Huo Xin is wearing the general's armor the whole time, a hard bone vows to die to defend the heart of Princess Jing is also revealed, there is also a detail element in the play is that Huo Xin twice blindfolded his eyes with a cloth strip, the first time was when he was young in the snow-capped forest with Princess Jing enjoying the snow, the cloth strip here is white, And the second time was because he showed his heart to Princess Jing, who had changed her skin bag, and when he scratched his eyes with a sword, the cloth strip used was black, and at the end of the whole play, Huo Xin and Princess Jing were riding on the grassland, and the cloth strip at this time was white, and the different modeling settings of different scenes of this character had visual modeling effects.
White always represents the purity of youth, while black is a symbol of gloomy scars and haze. The ending is a happy ending at the end, huo xin and princess Jing's shape is mainly white, such visual effects will also bring visual changes and psychological and emotional changes to the audience.
To some extent, the film breaks the audience's expectations as the main subject of the movie. The only "villain" catcher in the film, Pang Lang's shape is not as serious and simple as in traditional movies, but quite magical realism. Deep dark circles, troubled tattered clothes, bare legs wearing straw shoes, glowing treasure vases, and a worn-out demon book. These styling elements push his character out of the scene but in line with the identity setting, and he is also extremely funny in the film, according to the director Urshan, "The demon catcher Pang Lang is a multi-faceted person, he has cuteness, but there is also a small citizen, the side of the jianghu, it is precisely because of the coexistence of positive and negative energy that the personality of this character appears vivid and moving." ”
Under the shell of human demon love, the movie "Painted Skin 2" is essentially wrapped in the "exchange your heart for my skin" style of inner and outer exploration, and uses quite characteristic character shaping to build up the artistic tension of the film, and finally achieves a reunion ending of self-redemption.