Although the story begins with a failed marriage, the final foothold is to reach consensus and resolve conflicts. In this traditional family, there are regrets and misunderstandings, but there are no "bad people".
Funny and crying family movies have always been one of the most flattering genres in the film market. Jia Ling's directorial debut "Hello! Li Huanying", which triggered the emotional resonance of the audience, has exceeded a staggering 5.1 billion at the box office. Coincidentally, there is a movie that also takes the "small and beautiful" family emotional route - "Lonely Taste", which also won the box office champion in Taiwan in 2020.
The film is director Xu Chengjie's debut feature film, and the inspiration is also a true family story. "Lonely Taste" exceeded NT$190 million at the box office in Taiwan and received six nominations at last year's Golden Horse Awards. Recently, the film was launched on Netflix, which attracted the attention of many mainland film fans and received a Douban score of up to 8.0 points.
The movie poster reads "Pair up with each other, fight each other", and the second half of the sentence is in Taiwanese, which means to be together
"Lonely Taste" is easily reminiscent of Kore-eda's "Sea Street Diary", the highlights are in the delicate and vivid "women's play", there is a "negative heart" father in the family, and the plot progress revolves around the father's funeral. However, "Sea Street Diary" depicts the relationship between the four sisters, and the most important character in "Lonely Taste" is the role of the mother.
The so-called "lonely taste" refers to "doing one taste alone", and many snack bars in Taiwan only make one signature dish. The mother in the movie, on the basis of a delicious shrimp roll, from the roadside stall to the restaurant, raised her three daughters alone to grow up.
The disappearing father is a secret existence between mother and daughter. It turned out that in the mother's stubborn and stubborn life, the helpless "lonely taste" was this marriage that existed in name only - many years ago, he was in trouble with flowers and grass, abandoning his wife and abandoning his daughter.
At the beginning of "Lonely Taste", the mother suddenly heard the news of her husband's death, so she had to face the dusty past. During the funeral for her father, the grievances, resentments, and sadness that the mother and daughter endured each other found an opportunity to erupt. And because the father has a new lover after leaving home, the mother has to deal with the relationship with this "little three"...
Stills from "Lonely Taste", mother and three sisters
At first glance, the plot of "Zhenggong Dou Xiaosan" seems to be nothing new, much like the dramatic routines that family soap operas love to use. Some of my friends around me also expressed difficulty in accepting "Lonely Taste", believing that the plot was too "dog blood" and too "cliché" in the first place.
But in fact, if we look back at those classic family emotional films, we will find that the so-called "dog blood plot" abounds. Taking Hirokazu Kore-eda as an example, the plots of holding the wrong child, reorganizing the family, cheating on the divorce, etc., are the Japanese director's favorite story elements.
Soap operas make up gossip plots just to "stimulate" the audience's curiosity. Serious works depict family tragedies in order to use conflict as an opportunity to peek into the inner world of the characters and reflect the crux of the social environment. After all, in reality, it is not unusual for families to be bruised, and social news often sounds more magical than fictional plots.
Therefore, whether a family film is "real" enough, it is more important to see whether the character shaping is credible, whether the emotional expression is delicate and natural, and whether the theme is enlightened - and at these levels, "Lonely Taste" is well done.
Chen Shufang, an 81-year-old veteran Taiwanese actress, won the Golden Horse Award for Best Actress for her role as her mother in "Lonely Taste". The whole movie begins with her visiting the wet market, where she picks and chooses sharply, politely and aggressively circling with the vendors. At the end of this play, the image of a "Taiwan grandmother" with a fierce temper, a soft heart, and a traditional concept has already stood up effortlessly.
If you did not consult the information, you did not expect that Chen Shufen was 81 years old
In fact, the image of a reclusive and stubborn mother has appeared too many times in Chinese literary and artistic works. However, Chen Shufen's performance is sincere and moving, so it will not make people feel tired of "watching at all".
There are also comments that the mother's bitter life is too "rotten", and the husband who can't forget to leave all his life has not chosen to divorce. But I think this way of judging is a bit rough and rigid. Nowadays, there are many film and television works that please female audiences, deliberately creating the protagonist image of "independent women", but there are only empty progressive slogans and lack of convincing character motivations.
In contrast, in "Lonely Taste", the mother's point of view is indeed old, but the inner emotions can take root. She complained deeply to her husband: Why didn't you come back? At the end of the movie, her father's lover "Little Three" answers her questions - he can't face you because he is too guilty. This explanation is certainly nothing new, but it is exactly the sentence that my mother wants to hear most in her life.
It is worth mentioning that director Xu Chengjie did not "make up a bitter love scene out of nothing", but out of the observation and experience of life - the archetypal character of the mother role in the play is his own grandmother, and the marriage that exists in name only is derived from the grandmother's personal experience in reality. When Xu Chengjie was 13 years old and during the winter vacation, he returned to his hometown to attend the funeral of his grandfather, heard about the family's past, and knew his grandmother's heart. "You see how Grandma has changed in the past two weeks, from the original anger to the memories of sorting out old things and relics. I was observing the process of mama's reconciliation with herself, and when she understood the entanglements and resentments rather than the curses planted on her, she would be willing to let go of something. ”
The warm moment of the three sisters, in which Xu Ruoxuan, who played the second sister, agreed to star after reading the script of "Lonely Taste" on the plane, and also offered to be a producer for director Xu Chengjie
Perhaps it is precisely because it is the story of his own relatives that Xu Chengjie's film is very gentle, dissecting the thoughts and thoughts of the characters layer by layer, following the emotions, not without any "moral judgment", and not easily putting the "scumbag" and "PUA" hats on the father role.
In the process of watching "Lonely Taste", I felt a full of healing. Although the story begins with a failed marriage, the final foothold is to reach consensus and resolve conflicts. In this traditional family, there are regrets and misunderstandings, but there are no "bad people".
And the attitude of the three daughters to their fathers has also been handled unconventionally. Although they have been growing up with their mothers, they do not want to be completely infected by their mother's resentment, but secretly approach their father. In particular, the eldest daughter played by Xie Yingxuan is the inheritor of her father's "flowers and grass" gene, and also the daughter who has the greatest contradiction with her mother.
One of the best scenes in the whole film is the dispute between mother and daughter. The mother finally couldn't help but scold: "I have been struggling all my life to raise you up, but I lost to a father who has not been in contact with you for twenty years!" The eldest daughter also said the truth: "I am not Abba, we all know that I am not him, I have no way to apologize to you for the wrong things he did, Abba is dead." What you're going to do now is to let go, you know? ”
When Xie Yingxuan decided to play the role of the eldest daughter in "Lonely Taste", she had not yet won the Golden Horse Film with the movie "Who Fell in Love with Him First", and was once questioned by investors
There is another point line in the movie, from the mouth of the granddaughter who is calmly watching- "Why don't you talk about it?" ”
In reality, perhaps most families are in a similar situation, and there is no way for everyone to "talk about it" without scruples. We always have some questions, never asked, not so much because of the shyness and introversion of the Orientals, but because of the fear of the answers—what if the real answer is not the one we want to hear? Maybe one day, someone can't stand it, and finally asks the exit, the family relationship may become more harmonious, just like in "Lonely Taste"; but it is also very likely that the closest relatives will be forced to face the bad truth, and from then on they will gradually drift apart.
Of course, if you want to compare with the family films of mature directors such as Kore-eda and Ang Lee, Xu Chengjie still has a certain gap. Strictly evaluated, the tone of "Lonely Taste" is too warm and moving, and it lacks a sense of cold examination of family conflicts similar to "Eating Men and Women". In addition, although "Lonely Taste" is a group drama, in fact, from beginning to end, it only tells a "heart knot", that is, the grievances of the mother, and the daughters are the participants in the mother's story, lacking their own unique contradictions and conflicts, and the character image is not as rich and evocative as "Eating Men and Women".
Ang Lee's classic "Eating Men and Women", each character image is impressive
In addition, the story of "Lonely Taste" can certainly not be classified as an eight-o'clock soap opera, but the audiovisual effect is indeed a bit "TV-like", only simple translation, propulsion and other camera position changes. However, such a rough effect is also directly related to the lack of budget of the film - Xu Chengjie revealed in an interview that in fact, the entire film only uses one camera.