This article contains a lot of spoilers, so please read with caution
In the Chinese film industry, it has been a long time since a stop-motion animated feature film appeared on the big screen. At this year's Shanghai International Film Festival, the stop-motion animation "Female Him", directed by director Zhou Shengwei, was nominated for the Golden Jubilee Award for Best Animation, and was also shortlisted for the New Generation Unit of the 24th French Fantasy Film Festival and the competition unit of the 42nd Montreal International Film Festival.
This is a film with an object as the protagonist of the film, there is no one in the film, and the leather shoes are the rulers of this world. There is not a single line in the film, and the only dubbing that expresses the emotions of the characters is "ah", "ah" and other onomatopoeia.
The story of "Female He" is quite allegorical. In this world, at the beginning, it was dominated by male leather shoes, and women's high heels could only be kept in cages, giving them cotton socks that represented energy, and after giving birth to new identical women's high heels, they would be completely transformed by male leather shoes, so that they would be transformed into new men's leather shoes.
In order to save the child, a female high heel (in the draft, her name is Mulan) desperately fights to overturn the whole pattern, but falls into the situation of not having socks to feed the child. In order to earn cotton socks, she was forced to put herself in the shell of men's leather shoes and go to the factory where men's leather shoes worked.
On the assembly line, she became the only one who could not eat stockings, produce black thread balls, and had no way to earn socks by her own ability. She ate the stockings, and the cherries that fell out represented new life, growing green vines.
In the end, with their own perseverance and dedication to their children, women's high heels overthrew the rule of layers of male leather shoes, completely burned the entire world composed of black, iron screws and other dark colors, and used their own cherries to transform the whole world into a paradise belonging to women's high heels.
This world did not last for a long time, and the aging of women's high heels themselves could no longer produce cherries by eating stockings for cotton socks, and it was impossible to meet her daughter's endless thirst for socks. The mother, who tried her best for her daughter, was eventually eaten by her daughter, and the insatiable daughter not only eliminated her mother in order to obtain food, but also established a production line again. The only difference is that the workers are made up entirely of women's heels.
In the finale, nothing has changed in the world except for the replacement of men's leather shoes with women's high heels.
The style of "Female He" on the screen is very unique, red, green, black, white and other colors with strong contrast are all condensed in the same picture. The source of the light is also relatively single, and there is a lot of black around the picture. Through the placement of props, the film presents a very strong B-grade film color, and many elements borrow from "Wild Strawberry".
In addition to being visually unique, the style of props is also different from the mainstream stop-motion animation in the world. In order to complete this story, Zhou Shengwei took more than 58,000 photos and took 6 years to build. There are a total of 268 models in the film, made entirely by himself, and more than 80% of the props are from household garbage.
Inside, there are discarded beverage bottle caps, and there are cigarette butts that remove tobacco. Objects such as gloves, cotton socks, and stockings purchased in bulk were also deliberately moved and changed by Zhou Shengwei in a very unconventional way.
Zhou Shengwei said that he initially hoped to make this film to his mother, so that the female high heels would be draped in the "coat" of men's leather shoes to enter the assembly line work. Later in the film, the greed of the daughter and the construction of the female assembly line make the theme beyond the initial assumptions, and he hopes that through this story, it will convey that when facing power, both men and women will be subjected to the same corrosion.
There is also a clear contrast. Women's high heels originally disguised themselves as men's leather shoes in order to enter the assembly line of men's leather shoes. After she overthrew the rule of male leather shoes, a male leather shoe grew some products of women's shoes on its own, but because it did not really become women's shoes, she could only use the metallic texture of her body to imitate the plants on the body of women's shoes. Women will incarnate as men in order to make ends meet, and men will also incarnate women in order to survive, and in essence, the two are objectively opposite and equal beings.
Although the final ending of "Female He" is open-ended, the later high heel assembly line also hints at this reincarnation, which may continue forever. Where are the exports? Still no answer.
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