◎ Liang Kun
Laces are tied
"'Shoelaces' is like a mystery, like building a building to cleverly hide family secrets, and then dig them one by one." The New Yorker said this about Italian writer Domenico Starnone's novel Shoelace. The cover of the novel is a pair of feet wearing black leather shoes under trousers, and the two pairs of shoelaces are tied to each other, stumbling forward, and this decently dressed person is about to fall. Directed by Italian director Daniele Luketty, the film, based on the novel, tells the story of a couple whose husband cheated and remained married 30 years later.
The film follows the name of the original novel, "Lacci", and its Chinese translation "Marriage Connection" bluntly circles the content in the category of marriage, and uses "connection" to imply a necessary bond and subtle bondage. As the opening film of the 77th Venice Film Festival, "Marriage Connection" projects a concern for the old and often stinging social reality of "marriage".
Aldo left his wife Wanda and a pair of children for his lover Lydia, the young and beautiful lover let Aldo bathe in love, and his wife jumped off the building to commit suicide, which also made him entangled. Wanda attempts suicide, restarts her new life, finds a comfortable mode with herself and Aldo, and the children are reunited with their fathers. Aldo has not been able to escape the law of "red roses, white roses", he and Lydia gradually become angry, although the touch of mosquito blood of Wanda can not turn into a fiery red rose, at least it also conjures up the amber light of aged wine, and the children have outlined a warm golden color for the family, and the unbreakable bond is tied to Aldo. But the rebuilding of this family is just the prelude to another storm...
Unlike Noah Baumbach's "Marriage Story", "Marriage Story" tells the story of the disintegration of a marriage, but it has a relieving ending; the family relationship in "Marriage Connection" seems to be unbreakable, but in fact, there is an undercurrent, lurking in a bottomless whirlpool. In both films, there are imagery of shoelaces and the act of tying shoelaces, in "Marriage Story", the ex-wife naturally ties the shoelaces for the ex-husband holding her son, which is not only a reproduction of their warm past, but also a bright metaphor for them to end the battle and enter the next journey of the relationship between the sexes; in "Marriage Connection", the influence of Aldo's shoelacing on the child is only one of the many details that are subtle and difficult to separate between family members, and it is this constant inextricable connection that maintains Aldo's family relationship.
Aldo's trip between Lydia and Wanda eventually leads to Lydia's displeasure, and Aldo admits that whether he returns home on the weekend to reunite with his children or live with Lydia, he is happy. "But we didn't have any connection between us," Aldo said reluctantly, admitting that the rigidity of feelings was lost to the flexion of marriage.
However, when the elderly Aldo and Wanda blame each other, they are worthless for their lifelong contributions to the family, they feel that they are the most hurt party, and their children are also on the opposite side of their parents, and this family relationship that has given them great comfort has become extremely embarrassing.
"Daddy is back, for Mommy, for me, for you, for this damn shoelace, each of us is involved in it", "The only connection, Mom and Dad don't realize, is the bond that makes them torment each other for the rest of their lives", a conversation between children over forty years old insight into the nature of the parental relationship. At this time, the son has already given birth to several children with different women, and the daughter has learned from the marriage of her parents and never wants children.
A pair of shoelaces is finally woven into a huge and still expanding net, and the people who break out of the net realize the fatalistic inescapable of this bondage, and choose to throw themselves into the net again, and the people who stay in the net feel that their lives are always unhappy. This web that accompanies human civilization is always full of researchers, and "Marriage Connection" makes a less optimistic sound.
Lovers whisper
"There are two affirmations of love. First, a lover met the person he wanted, so he immediately made an affirmation... Then there is a period of secret groping in the tunnel: the initial affirmation is constantly bitten by doubt, and the criticism of the other party constantly endangers the value of love... How I affirmed it at the beginning, I give it affirmation again... I was looking forward to the return of old feelings, not repetition, and I said to each other (whether past or present couples): Let's start over! ”
This passage from Roland Barthes in his later book, The Lover's Whisper, depicts the blindness and persistence of lovers who are out of opinion and insist on affirming the value of love. Similar to the uncertainty, fluidity and multi-voice of its lover's whispers, the film "Marriage Connection" uses fragments that disrupt time and space and the multiple perspectives of different characters to construct the puzzle of family relations.
The opening film is a gentle perspective: the wrong husband admits that she has an external heart, which is difficult for her to accept, and she wants to save the marriage but cannot do it, further pushing the husband to the lover. Time and space then jump, and Wanda and Aldo are still together, but the discordant notes often interrupt the family's concerto. How did they come about in the more than 30 years that the mirror was difficult to complete?
Then we open Aldo's perspective to further explore the reasons for this, so we see the inner entanglement of Aldo after betraying his family. The holocaust happens when Aldo and Wanda are out on vacation, and when they return to see the mess in their homes, a storm that should have been staged long ago is inevitable. Even after returning to their families, even if Aldo and Wanda continue to live for more than 30 years, the photo of Lydia hidden in the Prague box still seals another side of Aldo. Who sneaked into the house? Who knows the secrets in the box? The suspense buried in many places, the free jumping time and space, the exquisite construction of the words and details make this story about loyalty, betrayal, and dissolving them all the time, smearing a confusing sensibility and rationality on the plot.
Finally, the perspective of the children, their reading of the relationship between their parents, and their love and hatred for the family, eventually formed a tornado that enveloped everything, and they rummaged through the boxes and cabinets in their parents' houses, wantonly destroying and venting their ambivalence. They despise the "connection" that their parents have painstakingly managed, and they also despise their yearning for Lydia. They destroyed what their parents did not dare to destroy, and ripped open the net that had been torn a thousand times in their hearts.
What makes love and unlove weaken, joy and pain numb?
"We're living in this disaster." Wanda, who had struggled, died and came back to life, finally spoke her heart to the marriage that had devoted her life's work. And that doesn't mean anything else is new, because Aldo still has a way, "In order to be together, we need to talk less, and that's important." "At this point in the story, the film has not yet let go of the audience, and the photo of Lydia hidden by her son under the cabinet is about to be found by Wanda, the suspense is all imaginary, and Pandora's box is about to erupt.
It's a pessimistic story, just as life won't let us go.