Text/Ma Qingyun
The film "The Burning Secret" was nominated for the One Kind of Attention Unit and one Kind of Attention Award at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. The film was also nominated for the most popular film in the premiere unit at the just-concluded 3rd Pingyao International Film Festival. Starring Actors such as Wu Kexi, Song Yunhua and Xia Yuqiao, the whole film can be boiled down to a rough plot synopsis: the self-cultivation of the heroine of an R-rated film.
The film was written by Wu Kexi and directed by Zhao Deyin. And Wu Kexi is also the heroine of this "Burning Secret". The shallow story of the film is about the heroine played by Wu Kexi, who is a network anchor, but she is a graduate of a professional acting college and has a dream of a big screen. At one chance, she could audition for a film that might win an award, but there was something big in the film that would undoubtedly cause great psychological damage to the actress.
The heroine played by Wu Kexi finally chose to participate in this audition, and in the process of auditioning, she had to play a pet dog, and learn to bark, but also to tear with another audition actress who has a competitive relationship to see who can rip off each other's clothes first.
Whether it is the large-scale shooting content or the "personality insult" in the audition, it has constituted a ruthless destruction of the heroine's heart. After such content, "Burning Secret" is at the end, releasing a bigger truth, and the heroine has to face the producer's metoo in order to play. And this scene has been recorded by another audition actress.
Why is this the shallow story of Burning Secrets? Because the mental journey of the actress of this R-rated film is actually just a kind of plot support of the movie, behind this film, it is the powerlessness of "being insulted and damaged" that makes fans really shocked. One that can form an intertextual relationship with "Burning Secret" is "The History of the Demise of Romanticism" directed by Cheng Er, and the other is "Traitor" directed by Min Kuidong.
Whether it is Cheng Er's "History of the Demise of Romanticism" or Min Kuidong's "Traitorous Minister", under the support of a story, it presents the powerlessness of human nature in the state of "insulted and damaged", and even has become insensitive and obedient. On the other hand, this "Burning Secret" seems to only talk about some of the so-called dirtiness of the film circle, but at a deeper level, it is the insult and damage of each living individual in the face of survival, and the powerless state in this state.
Of course, we can treat "Burning Secrets" as a simple film circle of secret content, see the shamelessness of film producers, and see the unscrupulousness of film directors and so on. However, the emotion behind the story content of "Burning Secret" is the question of the survival fate that may trigger the resonance of fans - in the personal world of film fans, do they have similar experiences to the heroine?
The film, in the first hour, was very restrained. How to play the heroine to audition, how to shoot the film, how to complete the work and get the recognition of the film festival, how to go back to the countryside to her bankrupt father, and so on. The final half-hour story attack threw the real pain to the fans. The real insult and damage may not be physical, but spiritual, and it is we who take the initiative to undertake this insult and damage.
The final part of the movie, the real "secret" of "Burning Secret", is not that the heroine is forced to learn the pet dog, not full of unhappiness, but there is no third person present, it is the heroine who laughs and learns the pet dog, and laughs and twists her own ass. Faced with similar survival pressures, what movie fan doesn't smile and hide his self-esteem? This is the real horror of cinema, it takes a seemingly cinematic circle of things, burning the hearts of our consciences.
In "The Burning Secret", Wu Kexi and Song Yunhua have intimate scenes that are "inappropriate for children". This kind of love drama between the same gender also poses a huge challenge to the aesthetics of movie fans. The uniqueness of this movie is that of course, we can treat the character played by Song Yunhua as an independent individual, but at a deeper level, it is the role of Song Yunhua, but it is the other side of Wu Kexi's role. The heroine of the R-rated movie, in "The Burning Secret", is a personality trait with a split personality. The roles of Wu Kexi and Song Yunhua are more like the same role, and the intimate drama they produce is more like a certain narcissism and even masochism in life.
This "Searing Secret" should obviously fall into the category of R-rated movies. But the so-called "inappropriate for children" cannot be regarded as a gimmick. The film is not so much a story as it is about "why the character is so", telling how the heroine finally does not live in this insult and damage.
If the meta story is the first realm of "Burning Secret", then the sentient beings who are "insulted and damaged" are the second realm of the film. Obviously, the third realm of the film is "not crazy and not alive", which is the "magical" relationship between art and the creators of art. Art and the artist themselves also present a relationship of "insult and damage", and in this relationship, they are intertextual.
Although "Burning Secrets" has some seemingly gimmicky content, what the film ultimately presents to fans is a kind of powerless pain, the pain of survival itself, and the pain of artistic expression. All tragedies are our own gaze on life. At this time, the audience becomes the real protagonist of the movie, "the heroine who plays is not as good as a dog", becoming ourselves, and the gaze on the movie makes the fans more and more painful.