In our country, some young filmmakers seem to have a misunderstanding of domestic films, as long as the story takes place in the countryside, there must be a serious realism and even social criticism (they also feel that only such films can win awards internationally). But often due to the lack of experience in rural life, as well as the usual arrogance of young people, they can always understand realism as boring and boring, turn social criticism into forced selling, works are not to say higher than life, and even restoring life is full of clumsy imitation and self-righteous imagination, and they have really rooted in rural life of the previous generation of filmmakers can not be compared.
Poster of "The Taste of Rice Blossoms"
Bi Gan's "Roadside Picnic" once broke this mold and photographed rural China with magical realism and light poetry. Pengfei's "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" has filmed it with a rare sense of humor and warm temperament.
The story is simple: a mother who has been working outside the village for many years returns to the village and fights wits with her daughter, who is beginning to enter a rebellious period, while at the same time, the old and new ideas in the once traditional village clash. All this made the mother a little overwhelmed.
Simple stories are actually especially difficult to tell, especially for young directors, in commercial films, simple stories are easy to be spilled in order to improve the watchability; in literary and art films, simple stories are easily given too many symbolic symbols by some young directors, or wrapped in too many redundant emotional and aesthetic meanings, sometimes they are not using the director's thinking to make movies, but using the film critics' thinking to make movies: every shot, each prop is not serving the narrative of the film, but serving the "interpretation" of the film. This can easily make the narrative of the film extremely bad, and the director is still self-congratulatory for his own sense of aesthetic superiority and fan thinking.
The rivalry between mother and daughter often makes the audience smile
"The Taste of Rice Blossoms" does not have these two problems, the director uses a smooth and exquisite narrative to tell a simple and bland story with a fascinating taste, and this taste is precisely life itself: unexpected, but not bloody, rare ups and downs, but also tasteful. It is commendable that the director is good at using small humor that is everywhere, and when the dramatic conflict becomes strong, he deconstructs the possibility of excessive sensationalism with a sense of humor, and controls the drama under the sense of everydayness.
On the line of mother-daughter feelings, although the actors rarely show strong performances, the development and change of mother-daughter feelings are quite clear, thanks to the exquisite narrative. For example, in the beginning of the film, on the way home from the mother, there is a little girl who sells eggs to the driver along the mountain road, and in the middle of the movie, when the mother is so angry with her daughter's rebellion that she wants to leave home, she meets the little girl again on the mountain road. For the first time, the mother looked at the girl with a look of joy and affection, as if she remembered her daughter who was about to meet. The second time, the mother looked at the girl who was pestering the truck driver to buy eggs, but she cried. This change of mood is easily understood by the average viewer: the mother thinks of her daughter again, but with self-blame and worry. So the mother regained patience and returned to the village again, taking on the responsibilities of being a mother. The little girl who sells eggs appears twice, reflecting the mother's feelings for her daughter.
And the daughter's emotional changes to her mother are also very condensed. At first, the mother just came home, the daughter hid in the quilt and did not want to see the mother, and when asked by the mother why, the sentence "It is better to listen to the sound" is really sad. But the daughter will also take revenge by stealing money because outsiders say bad things about their mothers. The strange similarity between mother and daughter is also expressed in the details: when she knows that her mother is about to leave, she does not say a word or return, but she will still stand on the teaching building and watch her mother go away with swollen eyes; the mother is superficially obedient and gentle, but in fact does not care about the stereotypes in the village. The stubbornness of the two is actually the same as each other's blood.
The most interesting scene is that the daughter stole money to go to the Internet café all night, and after the mother found her daughter, she did not alarm her and scold her, but kept vigil outside the Internet café for one night. After the daughter and her companions got into the car, the mother bought breakfast alone and ate alone, as if it were some kind of childish revenge. The daughter was in the back seat of the car, with no worries on her face, but calmly looked at her mother, and the coffee cans and cigarette butts beside her mother. They are like two strangers, from estrangement, to observation, to temptation, to struggle, in the final analysis, just looking for and determining their love for each other.
Stills from "The Taste of Rice Blossoms"
Another line, about the story that happened in the village. The development of transportation and networks has brought many changes to the village, children gather outside the temple with Wi-Fi to play mobile games, and newlyweds wear wedding dresses to sing mountain songs and worship Buddha. Even the topic of drinking and chatting among the men in the small restaurant is how to take advantage of the opportunity of building an airport to make tourist money by traveling. How similar is this scene to the people in the Sanlitun Café who talk about entrepreneurship and go public? The whole world is hot and cold.
In addition, there is the theme of "left-behind children" that has been hotly discussed in "The Taste of Rice Blossoms", in fact, only two scenes explicitly express this. Once, in schools, charities gave love to left-behind children, and when the children holding the gifts explained the source of the gifts, they sniffed the melon seeds and said, "Because we are left-behind children." The heaviness of the word was dissipated by the children and replaced by a sense of everyday absurdity.
Another scene is a big event in the village - the daughter's little friend is seriously ill and dies. During the illness, the little friend said to her daughter: "Before I had a small illness, they didn't care about me, and now I have a serious illness, I see them do it." "The naïve resentment, compared with the parents who finally rushed home, and the child's ending, have their own compassion and strength.
The child has just died, and the family and the villagers have begun to discuss how to divide the money they have donated. The mother leaves with her daughter and snuggles up to each other, reconciling in her thoughts and sorrows. At the end of the film, the dance dedicated by mother and daughter to the stone Buddha is amazingly beautiful.
"The Taste of Rice Blossoms" is not a movie that needs too much explanation, and I just want to tell you the details that touched me when I watched it. Those plain and delicate details are full of tenderness, not to criticize and conclude, just to listen and show, just such a gesture, it is enough to make people feel that this is a movie worth watching.