What if you are a fox who loves chicken the most, but you are not very agile and can't catch a chicken?
So you have to eat turnips... or! Reduce the difficulty and steal eggs instead! Then incubate the chicks yourself!
Well, this is the plot of the naïve stupid animated movie "The Story of the Big Bad Fox" that was released in China last Friday. Going back further, it is the story of one of the directors of the animated version, Benjamin René's picture book "Bad Fox". The picture book also just published Chinese march – though apparently no film has received attention.
Stills from the movie "The Story of the Big Bad Fox", the picture book is basically the same style.
According to the big friends who have seen the movie and seen the picture book, they all like it, like the innocence and liveliness, as well as the French humor, like its 2D watercolor style, and the theme of the old and the young, or for a simpler reason - willful, relaxed.
Author | Check The clouds
Usually, recommending a picture book or animation to the adults around you is not a one-size-fits-all thing. Then you might as well ask you in a different way: What was the last time you thought you were silly and funny, a little bored, but happy?
In my own case, it's like this —
The other day, I went to the flower shop next to the wet market and bought a lily. The lilies in southern Fujian are more than a meter long, and there are eight or nine bones on top of them, and I who are not very tall hold them vertically, just like Tang Sanzang holds a nine-ring tin staff; if you take it horizontally, you will hit the fish on the fish stall in the vegetable market. It's so embarrassing, I'm so embarrassed, I'm afraid of meeting acquaintances! But I was amused by this sense of humor of my own, and a few friends came to join in the fun.
"Last time I bought a clothes rail of more than a meter, walking on the road, it felt like a fate."
"You can... Carry it and try it? (That would be like the Eight Commandments of pigs, right?) ）
Admit it, adults have cute, playful, and funny moments in their daily lives like when they were children. The sense of comedy naturally penetrates into your and my lives, but we in adulthood unconsciously resist its "derived from life" and get used to filtering them out. When many post-80s and post-90s in China have become accustomed to self-deprecating "old aunts", as an adult, we are too much like the hen that hatches eggs in "Bad Fox", too nervous to forget how to relax. We will skillfully turn the political, entertaining, and adult versions of the passages around, but most people do not take the simple innocence and fun of daily life, further precipitate a refined sense of humor, and then use the brush to implement its details and temperament into a picture book or animation work that spans age.
In "Bad Fox", the fox who can't scare the chicken and the hen who is calm.
The author of the picture book "Bad Fox" and the director of the movie "The Story of the Big Bad Fox", the Frenchman Benjamin Renner did it. This fox and the pigs, rabbits, hens and many other animals on the farm, the innocence, fun and boredom revealed in the fight, are not limited to the category of juveniles, nor are they limited to French humor, they point to the bad and bad careful thoughts that everyone has had in their hearts, and the enjoyment of a little embarrassment, funny and boredom.
This is the reason why I often stop and laugh a few times when I look through the picture book, and before I read it, I can't help but look back at some pictures. What makes people fascinated and enjoyed is the "recall feeling" of "Bad Fox" to adults, and a corner that was originally lost and covered stretched out and woke up, followed by a sense of relaxation that slowly expanded between the pages, the calmness and confidence that can enjoy the useless use of fun and jumping.
After the bad fox stole the eggs, in order to eat a more delicious chick, the gray wolf asked him to incubate the eggs. hatch...... There was even a little shyness!
"Or if it doesn't work, we'll take turns doing it, and you do it once... I once..."
"In fact, you're looking at me here, a little uncomfortable..." "Okay, I'll go out."
After the bad fox hatched the egg successfully, it was helpless to start a series of strong motherhood experiences. For example, when forced to watch a chicken want to eat the first bug in its life, it is spoiled, tangled, nervous, and helpless.
"But I don't know how to eat it!" "No, it's too hard!" "But I just can't!"
Another example is being forced to get excited for a second--- in order to see a bland yellow leaf.
"That leaf is yellow!" "And then what?" "Gone."
The bad fox did not cause cruel harm on the fairy tale farm. Moments of boredom and embarrassment, such as those triggered by a yellow leaf, are magnified in the picture book by simple (some even incoherent) lines and sketch-style backgrounds, and the rhythm is adjusted by the split-shot picture, which can be expressed in a relaxed and romantic way without procrastination. The author's fine control makes awkward and boring and playful just right. A little more will appear deliberately shallow, and a little less will not be arrogant enough.
The picture book "Bad Fox" presents the story of the bad fox becoming a chicken mother for no reason, and in the movie version of "Big Bad Fox", the other two stories, "Sending Children" and "Saving Christmas", make other animals on the farm chickens and dogs jump out, especially let a pig shine the light of reason and responsibility. In the movie picture, the story background and details are more detailed than the picture book, such as the bad fox because he does not eat chickens, the cave is full of hungry turnips, and the cave in the picture book is only briefly outlined, which makes the logic of the movie version more comprehensive.
Stills from the movie "The Story of the Big Bad Fox", with many turnips piled up in the hole.
However, in the cinema, you can't willfully stop at a certain frame haha laugh and then continue, if you want to make the embarrassing meaning on the paper magnified more completely, or recommend turning over the picture book.
After all, picture books stay on the shelves longer than a one- or two-hour movie. After laughing, if there is still a little aftertaste, chasing this aftertaste and flipping through some pictures, maybe it will puncture the "Bad Fox" under the "hiss" and "aaaaah", the gap between the shades, to understand why it can be "suitable for adults".
Benjamin René's regulation of humor in Bad Fox is mature. He has always insisted on creating manuscripts in the hand-drawn way of watercolor, and the reason why the bad fox became a mother also stemmed from a confusion when he was a child: who did he really recognize as a mother when he first saw the chicken after breaking its shell? For example, the ingredients in the Bad Fox series are naturally simple, but people who eat vegetables know that the final taste of the dish depends on the feel of the person in charge of the heat, seasonings, etc., as well as a little personal habit. The good taste of "Bad Fox" also lies in those "lines" that can lightly point through people's hearts.
When the gray wolf was about to eat the grown chickens, he asked the fox with a hesitant face, "I said, you won't have a relationship with them, will you?" ”
A discussion about whether a fox should be gentle or not:
"I'm the big bad fox." "You won't be the big bad fox, you're too gentle!"
"I'm just a mean little fox, stupid and weak."
A few pages ahead, the gray wolf said, "What a fool! How could he have feelings for these balls of flesh? After turning a few more pages, a pig on the farm sighed, "You see, we can have feelings for anything!" Such sentences are simple, but if you flip it over, you may have a little bit of real feelings along with this funny farce.
I believe this is based on Benjamin René's experiences and feelings about life, which govern his sense of humor and rustic emotions. Perhaps because Benjamin René was influenced by traditional silent films such as Chaplin's work, or because these condensed sentences created a sense of dislocation in animal frolicking stories, so that the de-complicating lines became a special aftertaste left by the bad fox.
Benjamin René once said, "I deliberately retain a faint spirit in the painting, showing only the essence of things, beautiful things are not necessarily perfect in every way, we can tell a story in a very natural way". Adults with certain life experiences and feelings are more likely than children to touch this weak spirit and the essence of its achievements.
Stills from the movie "The Story of the Big Bad Fox".
Behind such a sense of humor and relaxation, there is always some foundation related to simple human nature and reasoning. When we touch its base, we find, hey, I feel like I've "learned" something from a picture book.
This can be used as a way to distinguish between frivolous humor and a light sense of humor. Many picture books that span the age bracket have this quality, as far as French picture books are concerned, from Sambe's careless but mellow comics to Jean-Claude Flock's "Life Trilogy", there are not many good works introduced in China over the years. The former makes people unconsciously more kind and attached to passers-by in the city, and the latter can probably be a fun life guide - I know that someone really dresses up as a Christmas tree at Christmas like the father in the "Life Trilogy".
They are not very important, but they can make life a little more flesh and blood, and dissolve dryness and indifference. Such a sense of humor is something worth enjoying.
Enjoyment, in itself, is a good use. But if meaning-seeking adults always have to ask again, what's the use of such a sense of humor? Under the Douban page of the movie "Big Bad Fox", a netizen summed it up this way: "The cuteness of this subtlety of French culture is like a little resistance to a boring life every day." ”
Such small resistance, in the gloomy rainy days that cover the blue, in the haze days when the branches of the trees cannot be seen 200 meters away, in the obscure weather that makes the sense of faith in life easy to shake, is not so important, but it is necessary. I don't know if the French will understand better, but I hope more Chinese readers will understand.
"There's always something in me that scares you sometimes, right?"
"Sometimes, yes, we get scared..."
"Afraid I'll eat you?"
"No, we're afraid you won't love us anymore."
There's always something in us that's about to be worn out, right?
Yes, we will be afraid.
Afraid that in the turmoil of human affairs and time, I will no longer love myself, I will no longer love your life, your time, and I will no longer try to care for and create a little resistance to the boring life every day.
Then, you can occasionally ask this bad fox to help.
Bad Fox by Benjamin René
Translator: Xie Yu
Version: Houlang 丨 Huashan Literature and Art Publishing House, March 2018
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