Probably the most unfortunate original author in the history of cinema is the Frenchman Boris Wion. On June 23, 1959, Viang suffered a heart attack while watching a film based on his novel and died while on his way to the hospital. Before his death, he publicly denounced the film, demanding that his name be removed from the credits. Since then, the adaptation of the "wasted original work" is no longer just a description.
This month, two days after the release of the film of the same name based on the novel "August Weiyang", the original author Annie Baby posted a long Weibo to tell his experience of watching the movie. Although not as fierce as Wei Ang's, the words also reveal dissatisfaction with the script: "There are obvious weaknesses and flaws in the choreography part. The advantages that lead to the film are separated from it, and the flaws are isolated and strong, so that the film does not reach a balance, the strong is stronger, the weak is weaker. At the same time, "August Weiyang" has also fallen to 3.8 points on the rating website, and Anne Baby, who has now changed her name to "Qingshan", is becoming the latest among countless "victims of botched remakes" in film history.
In the eyes of many people, Baby Anne is a representative writer of "Pain Youth" writing. Her novels are full of over-rendering of symbols such as wandering, distant places, and literature and art, and the formulaic use of love routines such as love triangles and unexpected pregnancies. However, in the 2016 "July and Ansheng", which is also remade from the original book of Annie Baby, these symbols and routines are not lacking, but the film has become a rare clear stream in domestic youth films in recent years, and word of mouth and box office have been doubled. It can be seen that the routine itself is not a problem, the genre film does not reject the routine, the problem is whether the presentation of the routine has kept up with the times.
The novel "August Weiyang" was published in 2001, and the adapted screenplay was written as early as 2007, and it won an award at that time. It was not until 2018 that director Li Kai took it out of the drawer and officially put it into filming. Without the unexpected success of "July and Ansheng", "August Weiyang" may still be in a state of dust.
Ironically, the key plot of "August Weiyang" and "July and Ansheng" have several similarities, but the evaluation is at both positive and negative poles: just like July and Ansheng, Weiyang and Qiao are also a pair of girlfriends with very different personalities. Wei Yang has an independent personality and is a cool girl who wanders the world, corresponding to Ansheng; Joe is a well-behaved girl, full of fantasies about love and family, corresponding to July. Both sisters are in love with the same man, Chao Yan, a half-hearted man like Jiaming in "July and Ansheng", who is obviously engaged to Joe, but falls in love with the free Wei Yang at first sight. Both love triangles are also tied up with the death of one of the two heroines, except that July is dying in childbirth and Joe is committing suicide by cutting his wrists, and Wei Yang and An Sheng both become mothers at the end of the story.
If these plots are dryly recounted, most viewers will feel bored, but the difference in entry points gives similar plots a different style: in "July and Ansheng", Jiaming repents of marriage, and the honest July can no longer stay in the small town, and has to quit her stable banking job and leave her hometown. As soon as the camera turns, we know that this repentance marriage is a bitter meat plan arranged by July. In her heart, she envied Ansheng's freedom to roam, feared being imprisoned by a loveless marriage, and had to escape from the unchanging destiny in this way.
The plot of the exchange of identities between July and Ansheng in the second half of the film does not exist in the original work, it reflects the skills of Li Yongchen and other screenwriters: "Abandoned Woman" is a tragic identity, but "July and Ansheng" suddenly reversed it and became the starting point of the protagonist's pursuit of freedom.
In "August Weiyang", a similar original "reversal" occurred after Joe's death, and the audience learned through the Japanese teacher that Joe chose to commit suicide because he learned that his girlfriend cheated on her boyfriend and was bent on completing the two. But this "reversal" not only did not sublimate the role, but turned Joe, who was already portrayed as a weak and obsessive character, into a tool without an independent personality at all, so the film could not get the audience's approval.
From this increase and decrease, we can see the gap between "August Weiyang" and "July and Ansheng": the former portrays the protagonist as a "virgin" who does not eat human fireworks and lives purely for love; the latter treats her as a flesh and blood person with pursuits.
In the original work, Wei Yang is like the "snake and scorpion beauty" in the film noir, and her love is also offensive: Wei Yang's mother has a life of misfortune because of her credulous belief in men's promises, and Wei Yang glimpses a temperament similar to her mother from Qiao's body, so she decides to break up Qiao and Chaoyan, which is both a rescue for Qiao and a possession of her. Luring ChaoYan to cheat is actually Wei Yang in order to prove to Joe that the man's sea oath mountain alliance is not credible, and the film version of the adaptation just treats this place as Wei Yang's refusal to return to Chao Yan, and Wei Yang's dominance in the love game is silently cut off.
From the poster of "August Weiyang", we can see that Chaoyan, who was manipulated by Weiyang in the original story, was upgraded to the real protagonist, he was in the center of the poster, and Weiyang became a supporting role. Chao Yan's desire and choice directly determine the fate of the two heroines. Wei Yang's possessiveness towards Joe was hidden and he became a passive narrator.
What's even more tragic is Joe, because the story is completely narrated from Wei Yang's point of view, so Wei Yang still has a certain right to speak, and Joe's story is fragmented, how she was abandoned, how she discovered the truth, how she decided to commit suicide - these are the most critical parts of the film, but they are not mentioned.
The space for the three leading actors in the film is also laid: Luo Jin, the actor of Chaoyan, seems to be at ease, far beyond people's expectations, whether it is infatuation or thin love, he can go in and out freely. Zhong Chuxi, who plays Wei Yang, is indeed glamorous, but because the plot itself is vain and powerless, the harder she performs, the more absurd the plot itself becomes. And Tan Songyun, although she played the roles of Qiao and Wei Yang's mother in the film, she did not have a complete plot of her own.
In the Christmas scene, a drunken Joe is going to tell how he fell in love with Chaoyan, but suddenly vomits uncontrollably, a scene that rises to the level of metaphor - the comic book-style "silly white sweet" girl is suppressed to silence throughout the film, and it is impossible to even tell her own story.
Whether it is "July and Ansheng" or "August Weiyang", Baby Anne is always keen on the "two flowers" in her pen to end with one dying and the other becoming a mother. "Painful Youth" has been criticized for its mannerisms and conformism, but it still reflects the twists and turns of the protagonist's reconciliation with his own traumatic experience. This is also what Zeng Guoxiang caught when remaking "July and Ansheng" and what Li Kai missed in his adaptation of "August Weiyang".
If there is any value in the original work of "August Weiyang", it is that Weiyang, who is a woman, tries to imitate male means to control Joe, which eventually leads to Joe's suicide. The film adaptation hides the dark side of Wei Yang imitating men, and relocates the words "kindness", "innocence" and "purity" to women, which on the surface seems to make the female image better, but also erases the only tragic meaning in the story.
The movie "August Weiyang" is typical in domestic youth films. In addition to the loopholes in the plot setting (for example, in this film, Wei Yang actually dragged nine months pregnant to travel to Japan, which is obviously not in line with the common sense of life), the most fundamental problem is that these characters are completely imaginary dolls, not flesh and blood characters. Passive puppet characters like Joe are not isolated, but are the most common types of female characters in domestic youth films. The similar work starring Zhong Chuxi before "August Weiyang" was "Buckwheat Crazy Growth". In the film, she plays a role similar to Joe, the climax of the film is that she dances in the rain after being abandoned, this dance alone is still very expressive, but because the previous plot is too bloody, the actor can only make the audience cry and laugh no matter how passionate. Should the lament be that the actors themselves lack the vision of the film, or too many similar films that are inherently difficult to compliment and can only waste the talent of the actors - I am afraid that the latter is more likely?
Author: Xu Xiao, Ph.D. in Literature and Art, Capital Normal University
Editor: Xu Luming