Xiaoyu and boyfriend Jiang Wei smuggled from the mainland to New York to make a living, because they did not have a green card, the two could only sneak some odd jobs to earn a living, at any time there was a danger of being found by the immigration bureau to deport. In order to get a green card, Jiang Wei actually thought of a bizarre idea:
Let the 20-year-old girlfriend Xiaoyu first marry Mario, a New York man in his 60s, pass the examination a year after marriage, Xiaoyu can get a green card, and then Xiaoyu divorce Mario, and then marry Jiang Wei, so that Jiang Wei can also get a green card.
The plot at the beginning comes from a movie "Little Girl Fishing", which is a thought-provoking film. Boyfriend Jiang Wei is asking his girlfriend Xiaoyu to "sacrifice" himself to marry an old American man in exchange for two people's green cards, behind such a seemingly "wonderful" method, but implicit in the inequality of the relationship between the two: Why sacrifice Xiaoyu to marry an old man? Jiang Wei himself could have stepped forward and entered the home of an old American woman first, so why didn't he do it?
Because, Jiang Wei, a macho man, subconsciously feels that women should be on the side of self-sacrifice in the relationship between the sexes. Behind all this, in fact, there is already a certain dark side of human nature.
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Transnational couples have always been the focus of the USCIS. Xiaoyu and Mario have to complete the full process of marriage for a couple: including taking wedding photos, getting a marriage license, living together for at least a year, and each step must be watertight.
In particular, cohabitation is the easiest thing to reveal, and the Immigration Department will conduct a surprise inspection of the residences of multinational couples to confirm whether they are a real couple.
Originally, Xiaoyu and her boyfriend Jiang Wei lived together, and after "marrying" Mario, Xiaoyu moved to Mario's house and lived with Mario. Such a change made Jiang Wei's heart very unhappy, and Xiaoyu's life, circling between 2 men, also faced great embarrassment and challenges.
Between Xiaoyu and Mario, there are ethnic differences and cultural barriers. Mario's heart has been a little diaphragm, until one day, Mario broke out, because the sloppy room he spent 10 years to build, was actually cleaned by Xiaoyu in an hour, seeing that there was no familiar appearance in the home, Mario instantly lost his sense of belonging, and turned his anger to Xiaoyu and scolded her.
Faced with Mario's fury, Xiaoyu was overwhelmed and could only endure in silence.
In the movie, xiaoyu not only has to deal with Mario, but also wholeheartedly takes care of the feelings of "real boyfriend" Jiang Wei.
Every time he had the opportunity to seize some time gap, Xiaoyu would sneak out quietly and rush to Jiang Wei's small rental house. In the face of her boyfriend, Xiaoyu will swallow the haze between her and Mario in her stomach, she does not want her boyfriend to worry too much about herself, she skillfully washes, cooks, cleans up the room for Jiang Wei, and works hard.
There is a scene in the movie that makes me think deeply about the relationship between the two. One day, Xiaoyu bought crabs for Jiang Wei. Xiaoyu eats crab legs, and Jiang Wei eats meat paste. The small fish here ate with taste, and Jiang Wei also ate a lot. But behind this seemingly equal score, there is also a hidden asymmetrical relationship between the two, and the boyfriend is used to enjoying better things, enjoying Xiaoyu's efforts, and subconsciously taking these things for granted.
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Xiaoyu is a naïve girl, her mind is pure and immaculate, she feels that she sacrificed a year, in exchange for a happy life with her boyfriend in the future, no matter how tired it is, it is worth it. But what she didn't know was, .
Jiang Wei's heart is full of contradictory struggles: on the one hand, he feels that his girlfriend lives in another old man's house, washing and cooking for him, making beds and folding quilts, and his heart is full of jealousy and resentment, after all, his girlfriend has always served only himself, but now he wants to share it. But on the other hand, the idea of "fake marriage" was conceived by himself and promoted Xiaoyu to implement it, in order to get a green card, he could only endure, and the resentment in his stomach could not be vented.
In the film, Jiang Wei always yells at his girlfriend Xiaoyu for no reason, and even Xiaoyu's casual eyes will make Jiang Wei scold her: "What do you see?" ”
Movie stories are often exaggerated and sublimated in life.
From the mind of the male protagonist Jiang Wei, we can roughly glimpse the consistent contradictions of some men. In real life, we can also see that some men have similar contradictory behaviors: on the one hand, let their wives be full-time housewives, do all the housework wholeheartedly, take good care of the children, and serve the in-laws well. On the other hand, when the man encounters unpleasant things outside and has nowhere to vent his resentment in his stomach, he will come back and accuse his wife of only enjoying at home, not making money, not socializing, and the whole family depends on him for a man to support him.
He did not think at all about how hard a full-time housewife was, nor did he think of how much opportunity cost his wife had sacrificed: if she did not give up her job to become a full-time housewife: she might be a bright urban white-collar worker, with three or five girlfriends, enjoying the exquisite life of the city, rather than staying up at home every day to become a yellow-faced woman who washed and cooked.
The most paradoxical thing is that men enjoy all the benefits and conveniences of their wives being full-time housewives, but in turn accuse their wives of not making money to support their families like those working women. And, taking ten thousand steps back, wasn't all this an idea proposed by men at the beginning?
The valuable thing about film art is that it can evolve the asymmetrical relationship in real life into the plot in the movie, so that we can get insight and reflection in the process of watching the movie.
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Under several close-up shots of the film, Xiaoyu's innocence and Jiang Wei's hypocrisy are at a glance, and behind all this, it is caused by human nature.
One day, Mario prepares an exquisite candlelit dinner to enjoy with the little fisherman.
A doorbell suddenly rang outside the door, and the two men thought it was someone from the immigration bureau who came to check and hurried to open the door. When he opened the door and looked, he found that it was Jiang Wei standing outside the door, and Jiang Wei saw the exquisite candlelit dinner on the table, his face instantly darkened, and his heart was full of unwillingness and jealousy. He began to suspect that maybe she had begun to change her mind and began to dislike her poor boyfriend.
He even began to worry that if Xiaoyu really did the fake drama and had real feelings for Mario, from a fake marriage to a real marriage? Even if Xiaoyu and Mario don't have a real relationship, but after getting a green card, Xiaoyu's identity is completely different from herself, what if she turns around and finds a better object?
Since he was unwilling, Jiang Wei's desire to control Xiaoyu became stronger and stronger. In order to let Xiaoyu see his sense of influence, Jiang Wei will also suddenly go to Xiaoyu and Mario's cohabitation house to do a "surprise inspection". But what he didn't know was how clean and pure Xiaoyu's mind was, and when he treated Jiang Wei, he only had the idea of helping each other in the same boat from beginning to end.
One day, Xiaoyu was on vacation, she came to Jiang Wei's room and quietly waited for Jiang Wei to return, wanting to surprise him. But that night, Jiang Wei did not return all night.
In the days that followed, Xiaoyu and Jiang Wei, every time they met, they either quarreled because of jealousy, or the little thing between husband and wife. Life has also become a "routine", and the days have become more and more plain.
But Jiang Wei's desire to control Xiaoyu, like a rope, tightened the tighter it became.
Until one time, Xiaoyu and Jiang Wei were in the room, and suddenly saw Sally knocking on the door outside, Jiang Wei went to open the door, Xiaoyu heard all the details of their conversation. It turned out that Sally had just broken up with her boyfriend, and she came to find Jiang Wei to tell Jiang Wei the address after she moved. After Xiao Yu listened to this, he understood on the spot that Jiang Wei had derailed. The fortress of love that he had always been proud of was also captured. Xiao Yu's heart seemed to be dripping blood.
Still facing the few words chanted in the worker's song, Xiao Yu's heart knot was gradually opened, "Maybe you are not my only partner, although I once needed you to give me encouragement the most, I hope you will stop holding me tight, let me make some decisions on my own." Xiaoyu put a pot of flowers under the sun, which indicates that Xiaoyu has awakened to the fact that the fate of his life also needs to be grasped by himself.
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At the end of the film, Xiaoyu's self-consciousness has fully awakened. When Jiang Wei ordered her to come out to see her within 5 minutes, she "disobeyed" for the first time, and she finally understood that she was not an accessory to her boyfriend, she was herself, and her life should be decided by herself.
The film is an open-ended ending, Mario is seriously ill and will soon die, Xiaoyu is grateful that he was once kind to himself, and has been taking good care of Mario in the last moments. After Mario's death, Xiaoyu went out into the world alone, which heralded that Xiaoyu would start a truly independent life.
In the film, after the rendering of the close-up plot of fake marriage and cohabitation, the characters of Xiaoyu and Jiang Wei, the two male and female protagonists, have been ready to come out.
Xiaoyu is a typical Asian female figure who is simple, stoic, somewhat humble, and her sense of self has not yet fully awakened. So we can see that although she is circling between two men and enduring oppression from both sides, she still does her best to take care of the feelings of two men and silently give her youth.
Jiang Wei, on the other hand, is a macho, possessive, selfish, and jealous negative male image. In the family-themed film "Girl Xiaoyu", Jiang Wei is essentially a "villain", and the director sets up a series of obstacles and tests for Xiaoyu through him, which not only allows us to see the dark side of human nature, but also allows us to see the struggle and pain that Xiaoyu endures in the process of self-consciousness awakening.
The brilliance of the film "Little Girl Fishing" is that through a farce of transnational marriage, at least two layers of deep meaning are written: one layer is the self-awakening path of traditional Asian women represented by Xiaoyu. The other layer is the asymmetry of relations between men and women in traditional old-fashioned families, which is gradually dissolving with economic and cultural development.