Original title: In the 90s, who was the perfect girl in your mind?
Youth restores the beauty of a girl
If we talk about the love and the image of the girl on the screen in the 90s, the "Japanese" aesthetic created by actors such as Shunji Iwai and Yu Aoi and Aoi Miyazaki on the screen has become a sign, and this purity of withdrawal from the daily height did not begin with Shunji Iwai. This increasingly pure image of a girl can be seen in Nakahara's "Cherry Garden" in the early 1990s. Similar to this "girl ukiyo-e" movie, the girl, school, youth or some of the more ambiguous lily elements of the fusion, and then fade the influence of 80s comics on girls' films, literary and artistic creation techniques are more inclined to add aesthetic atmosphere to the screen girls in visual aesthetics and content. At the same time, different from the commercial orientation of pure love movies that place the moving image of young girls in touching love stories in the future, such literary and artistic films will pay more attention to the taste of girls themselves and life.
Stills from Flowers and Alice
For example, the relationship setting of the love triangle in "Flowers and Alice" is actually a clever mobilization of the film's capture of the image of the girl in life, and it is pointed out in more emotional aspects, whether it is family relationship or ignorant love, often when it seems to show more emotions, it will be humorously resolved. And the most widely circulated in the whole film is the clip of You Aoi dancing on a paper cup, completely putting the image into the girl, abandoning the shackles of the plot to find the relationship between the United States and the girl in the picture, both simple and beautiful, just like Shunji Iwai's soundtrack is both classical and youthful, so Aoi Yu did not use a sentence to show the almost perfect ideal of the girl image.
Yu Aoi in Flowers and Alice
The same is true for the shaping of Xia Fan's image in Yamashita Atsuhiro's "Natural Substructure", yamashita Atsuhiro deliberately reduced the director's sense of existence on the plot and grasped the pure and lovely image of Xia Fan. In this regard, "Natural Substructure" seems to be more able to explain the relationship between this girl and the image, the film is very simple in the plot, so after weakening the dramatic image of the plot, the refinement of the image of the girl becomes particularly important.
Real beauty is a necessary means of expressing emotions, and at the beginning of the film, the prose style presents the beautiful scenery of the countryside, the lush mountains, the watermelons in summer, the sea and the train tracks, and the clear picture creates a fresh aesthetic taste, which also makes the youthful feeling of the girl's emotions in the film particularly distinct. As a traditional culture in Japan, the traditional culture of the festival has a different bustle from the quiet scenery of the village, often has a very reference nature, similar to the fire of the summer festival in "Moving" and the picture of the girl alone in the long shot to show the mood of the girl's growth process, flowing and full, and in the "Natural Substructure" In the festival, the emotional expression of Xia Fan's tears at the festival is extracted from the bright and lively performance on the stage, and the shot of Xia Fan is withdrawn separately, blurring the background, and shooting quiet and natural.
Xia Fan in "Natural Substructure"
It can be said that the whole film pursues a simple and relaxed state, the beauty of the girl and the beauty of the image in the life story, through the filter of the girl, shooting the purest rural scene and the simplicity of the first love. Once again, because of this girlish image, people are full of hope and yearning for life (movie).
While looking for a more and more natural image of a young girl, a kind of vibrant youth film subdivided in the genre has begun to enter people's vision from the "Breaking wave youth" starring Tanaka Reina, whose main body is mainly sports or music, and the bright rhythm and comedy style have broadened the main body of its audience, especially "Swing Girl" has not only achieved good box office results, but also made everyone impressed by the refreshing and lovely Ueno Tree. And this particularly distinctive youth film corresponds to the most vigorous and spontaneous girl in contemporary times to restore the original appearance of youth. It is also in this way that full of positive energy and making people feel happy and cute has become the reason why people love girls.
Rena Tanaka in Swing girl
In general, the pure love image of young girls still occupies the main body, whether it is the above-mentioned literary and artistic films or later more commercial dynamic youth films are active in the screen with a pure image, and not only that, in some films with serious themes in the 00s that continue the historical line to the current timeline, the pure image of the girl also has a certain symbolic significance, such as the wellbore and luck that have been paying attention to the Koreans in Japan, in its film "Invincible Youth" about ethnic relations. The pure image of Hideyoshi Nakazawa symbolizes a breakthrough in ethnic relations. In "Fuso Flower Girl", which was also favored by the movie Shunbao, Yu Aoi also represents the image of people regaining hope in the coal mining town in the 60s facing great changes in life. That is to say, for the pure girl image of the 90s and 00s, it is often important to accompany the theme of youth.
Yu Aoi in "Fuso Flower Girl"
Love wanders and is alienated in the lonely city
Compared with those who desperately appeal to the beautiful image of young girls, the loneliness of the 90s seems to be more real, and the slightly drowsy and lonely tone across the big screen, those stories that explain love have touched people's lonely inner emotions. And those directors who are good at expressing love or mobilizing lonely images have also captured the sensitive image of urban women and transformed them into certain characteristics of the film or the times.
For films after the 90s, Tadao Sato also said in his continuation of film history that after the themes that once resonated with people were achieved, there are few themes left today, and movies that talk about despair abound, but films that are diverse between ideals and despair should be paid great attention. In these vague and ambiguous films, the desire to express the emotions of the city penetrates deep into the individual, and the image of the girl in the tightly woven ring is also indispensable, similar to Ichikawa Jun's loneliness in "Tokyo Marigold" to make Tanaka's loneliness real and alienated, Ichikawa Jun with his consistent pursuit of calm suggestive expression, seemingly recording a way of life, but with a calm and slow rhythm to reveal the loneliness of the place, and Morita Yoshimitsu's "Spring Love Letter" created a lonely and romantic image in Fukatsu Eri.
Rena Tanaka in Tokyo Calendula
In 1996, Morita Yoshimitsu's "Spring Love Letter" told the love story of the early Internet era, Morita Yoshimitsu seemed to inadvertently insert willow to make a traditional love story, but while focusing on delicate life, interspersed with the network of text exchanges, it has a different meaning. The same Fukatsu e-e also has an image of more than just a simple desire for love under such a cinematic trait, she faces the grief of love, lives alone, reads Murakami alone, and magnifies this sense of daily loneliness under the monotonous picture of online text.
And to deepen the connection between the characters in the context of the overall urban environment, in the film there is often a picture of a glass shooting character when the character appears, especially in the part of fukatsu painting, when the family comes to the bakery where the spring works, when the two have a dialogue, the perspective shifts from the inside of the bakery to the outside through the glass to shoot the dialogue between the two people, the same spring wearing a kimono and talking about marriage on the mountain is also shot from outside the window, and the glass reflects the environment of the outside city. This method of strengthening the inside and outside seems meaningless to show the urban landscape too much, but to accumulate the details of the urban image to make the characters more integrated. When emotions are expressed and ambiguously related to the urban environment, emotions become the main body that affects the city.
Fukatsu Eri in "Spring Love Letters"
It is in this way that when we see Fukatsu Eiri and the city through glass many times, the image of Fukatsu Eri allows us to perceive an urban lifestyle accompanied by a sense of loneliness.
And under the loneliness of the pull is the inner gentle tension, Morita Yoshimitsu to its inner incomparably gentle side of the show, the film two people meet with a digital camera to shoot each other under the speeding train, is a very romantic scene, thus pulling the theme of the film back, the early network development is a new way of communication for people, such a new way of communication for people to find a window, but followed by inevitable tentativeness, and uneasiness, Just as the two choose to meet in this way, it seems to be the romance derived from this modern life, but once again because of the isolation of digital technology, there are complex changes in emotions, and whether the seemingly moving love moment is separated by a layer of indifference and illusion of modern technology. This is also precisely the inner uneasiness of Fukatsu-e, who wears red and has a longing, and the image of Fukatsu-e, which is tentatively on the edge of the real and dream-like edge of urban love, has become a glimpse of the living conditions of urban people in the 90s, and the daily loneliness and sincerity of love are constantly narrowing, and unintentional love has become the loneliest thing in this city.
Stills from "Spring Love Letters"
Interestingly, Fukatsu Eiri's introverted personality revealed through the modern way of life is particularly traditional when she wears her kimono, which is in line with the film's traditional approach to shooting early online love stories, so Fukatsu Eiri itself seems to have engraved a mark that must belong to this era.
In the films of the 90s that expressed their mood and the more diverse girls' films of the next era, their themes were not necessarily macroscopic, but they created a variety of possibilities in the gap space between the big themes. Therefore, whether it is commercial production or the pursuit of artistic expression, in the process of continuous development of film diversity and the transformation of demands in each era, the beautiful girls on the screen have left unforgettable impressions again and again, they are like a beautiful and depressed poem, flowing and chanting in each era.