Poster of "The Taste of Rice Blossoms"
Reference News Network reported on May 4 it is difficult to believe that "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" treats the realist theme so lightly.
The seemingly bland "The Taste of Rice Blossoms", which participated in the "Venice Day" competition unit of the 2017 Venice Film Festival, was equipped with an ultra-luxurious production team: the photographer invited Cai Liangliang's royal photographer Liao Benrong, the soundtrack was Keiichi Suzuki, who has collaborated with Takeshi Kitano many times and won awards for "Humpback City" and "Extremely Evil 2", and the editor Chen Bowen is the editor of "Yiyi" and "The Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street", he has been nominated for the Golden Horse Award six times, and the choreographer Peng Fei is Cai Liang's screenwriter and Hong Shangxiu's assistant. You can see the subtle infiltration of the masters, and "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" also has a distinctive fresh temperament in aesthetics.
The story of left-behind children may be full of sadness, but the style of "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" is very clear, it does not amplify sadness, does not strengthen conflicts, and uses humor to dissolve barriers.
Do not amplify sorrow
Left-behind children murmur
The story told in "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" is simple: Ye Lan, a mother who works in Shanghai, returns to the Dai countryside in Yunnan to visit her daughter Lan Hang, who stays in the countryside. But the film is cleverly designed. In the film, there is no explanation of why her mother Ye Lan divorced her husband, nor how she works in Shanghai, and how long she will stay in the Dai countryside when she returns home, these gaps are all omitted, but they lead to speculation and imagination. The small perspective of "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" contains a large context of change, intergenerational communication, women's status, and urban-rural differences can be reached, but they are integrated.
Director Pengfei likes Kitano Takeshi, his Kitano Takeshi's works: "Some topics are indeed cruel, but his shots are very simple and clean, and when it is time to explode or touch people, they can do it very accurately", in "The Taste of Rice", you can see Pengfei's teacher in place, and there is a naughty shadow everywhere.
Many rural films often like to use non-professional actors, or the scenes are set in gray-headed and more than a dozen-tier cities, and the roles are often depressed - such as talents cannot be stretched, alienated from rebellion, and cannot go to the city to return to their hometown... It's not that they're bad, it's that "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" is a surprising anti-routine work, without a big reason, but to make the audience happy with the happiness itself.
Do left-behind children have to be miserable? They miss their parents, should they wash their faces with tears every day and pull together gangs to walk on the road of no return?
Do young people who return home necessarily become depressed and depressed? Didn't they also find work in big cities and send money home, more or less out of the small countryside, with a broader choice than in their hometown?
The brilliance of "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" is that it does not have any sincere description of colored filters. Viewers occasionally wonder whether the portrayal of left-behind youth in the film is lighter. However, the lack of strong dramatic conflict in "The Taste of Rice Blossoms" actually represents that the creator has a strong sense of reality, and didn't Abbas capture the truth in the way of intervening in fiction in the appearance of reality? Director Pengfei has adopted a technique that is light and different from the master, and such a fresh work can be described as one of the few now.
Does not reinforce the conflict
There are constant contradictions between the daughter Mu Hang and the mother Ye Lan
In the mother-daughter emotional description and intergenerational communication, the daughter's bad habit of indulging in mobile phones and online games did not trigger a direct conflict between mother and daughter, and the film instead depicted a mother image with a female aura and emotions that are not easy to expose.
Rubbing wiFi in front of the Buddhist hall to play games, mother Ye Muan persuaded ineffectively and silently withdrew, and the sudden black in the camera turned off the electric gate, leaving a sentence "The Buddha is going to sleep." Mu Hang silently retrieved the confiscated mobile phone and pretended to sleep in the bed, but was turned back by his mother Ye Lan and returned to catch it. Sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to play games in the Internet café, mother Ye Ran drove to the Internet café to arrest people, but did not break out of the mother-daughter conflict, but bought cigarettes and slept in the car for one night, and the next morning ate breakfast normally but raced all the way, revealing the restrained and natural emotions of being a mother.
When The police took her away by the police after stealing the paper money offerings from the Buddhist temple, my mother suddenly got out of the car, walked in the green mountains, and drove to the airport to empty.
"The Taste of Rice Blossoms" also faithfully records some of the local special customs that are considered unnecessary in the big cities.
The film was filmed in a Dai village in a Wa autonomous region on the Border between China and Myanmar, where ethnic minorities converge. One of the details is that When a friend of Lan Hang is sick, he asks the old man in the mountain to summon the soul, "How come the mountain god is always attached to her?" When Ye Nan passed the door, he also deliberately bypassed the "white horse" among the old people, with respect and understanding, which was very natural.
There is also the picture of the villagers praying to the mountain god in the final paragraph, but they are afraid that they cannot enter the "tourist scenic spot" after the development. One has a sense of absurdity in the clash of modern civilizations, and the other shows that the cave dance is full of spirituality, it seems to be detached and fit, this abrupt beauty, even more sublimated ethereal, as if Cai Liang's ending is evocative: all conflicts and reconciliations, opposites and dissolution, as if finally returning to nature.
Use humor to break down barriers
Daughter Mu Hang and mother Ye Mu danced together in the cave
Reference Culture Found When watching the movie, the audience did not look drowsy like watching traditional literary and art films, but was made laugh from time to time. The humorous tone of the film is reminiscent of Takeshi Kitano's "Kikujiro's Summer", and its delicacy is a bit like "The Taste of Tea and Rice". And this boldness of four or two thousand pounds begins with understanding - director Pengfei stayed in the Small Village of the Dai ethnic group in Yunnan for a year, and Yingze, one of the female lead actors and screenwriters, also lived a local life for half a year, learning dialects that are "as good as singing".
In the director's shot, Mu Hang is no different from ordinary children, who will rebel, mischief, and lie. There are a lot of surprising passages in the film:
When her mother Ye Lan drove Yang Hang and the other three little babies home, after passing the hostile classmates, Ye Nan said: "It is the classmates who help to carry him no matter how", and the hostile classmates got into the car and sprayed The black material of Hang Hang, so sure enough, unexpectedly, a distant shot, the hostile classmates were driven off by Ye Lan.
At school, Heon hangs out to bribe the teacher and gives his mother chocolate. The teacher thought it was a good intention at first, so he took a bite. Later, he realized that he wanted to blackmail the benefits, and then used his wonderful mathematical knowledge to spell out the missing piece of chocolate back to the whole, leaving a sentence for Mu Hang: "It is important to learn mathematics well, go back."
Lan Hang will be angry with the teacher and secretly bury the teacher's key and mobile phone in the stream land in the township.
He went to visit his sick and dying friend. My friend said to her, "Before I had a small illness, they didn't look at me, but now I have a serious illness, what should I do when I see them?" "It's actually the sick girl's last wish. He said, "I'll do a magic trick for you", and then the camera turned the cloth cover and lifted it, and the director used a mature magic shot to "change out" the girl's parents.
These passages are based on observations of life, and are therefore more likely to resonate with the audience.
Why is the movie called "The Taste of Rice Blossoms"? It is said that rice flowers, originally a food symbolizing reunion and blessing by the Dai people, were given to the Buddha and his relatives and friends during Songkran according to custom. Used in the movie for left-behind children and returning youth, it has a deeper connotation: rice is planted by us, just like children, if we do not discipline him, rice flowers and rice wine will change taste. And this is more or less indicative of the director's view of left-behind children. (Text/Zhu Qiqi)