Chen Guo has been in the film industry for many years and has also directed many films. Although different movies have different standards due to different situations, the same movie can also get very different reviews.
However, the biggest feature of Chen Guo is his independent personality. And this spirit has continued from "Five Lonely Hearts", which was also the first film to be directed but not officially released in Hong Kong, and the same is true for the current "Three Husbands".
"Three Husbands" was filmed quickly, and it took less than a month to complete, but the brewing period was 17 years long, chen Guo said that the concept of the story had already existed, and the problem was that the social changes were too fast, so that he had not been able to figure out how to tell the story of "prostitutes".
I personally don't hate "Three Husbands", but the film is really not much like Chen Guo's early works, and some scenes are indeed "over".
When making erotic films, erotic scenes should help promote the plot, which is the intrinsic meaning of film art. Watching Obayashi's "New World of Senses", we know that it is not to stir your desires, but because it writes about human nature through eroticism, it is basically a horror film. "Three Husbands" is not at all about showing off pornography in this sense, but Chen Guo pushes the scale very closely, and many scenes will definitely be disgusting.
"Three Husbands" may not be every audience's tea, but the film has a set of touching and helpless views on the description of Hong Kong through the experience of Three Husbands and A-Mei. Compared with the two early co-production films "Murder Like Water" or "Brilliant Moment", it is also obviously much more comfortable.
"Three husbands", as the name suggests, is to marry three husbands.
The story tells the story of A-mei, who suffers from sex addiction, and her three husbands. The opening is a story about prostitutes.
However, it is not so much a disease as it is a primitive need of human beings. In Ah Mei's world, there is no social norm, no civilized morality, only primitive desire and satisfaction, very pure. The three husbands let her prostitution therapy sex addiction, which is a ridiculous act in reality, but in her point of view, the three husbands are satisfying her requests, just as she is hungry and feeding her food, normal.
So although there are a lot of erotic scenes in the movie, it makes you feel a little unbearable. Because A-Mei has a great need for sex, so ordinary men can't meet her, so the film appears in the goldfish, eels, telephones, and even prosthetic limbs and other fantastic choices, in addition to the director's imagination, perhaps also has a deeper meaning, left to the audience to understand.
The film opens with a live abalone being grilled on a fire and twisting and twisting with the temperature.
Abalone is the most obvious visual metaphor in form, and it is even more likened in the movie to a half-fish half-human creature called "Lu Ting" in the Tai O area of Lantau Island, which is compared with the mermaid who died for love in fairy tales, and Ah Mei maintains a fish state.
Ah Mei picked up the passengers on the boat by the port, and whenever she opened her legs and swayed and moaned, her body was aggravated by the unstable shaking of the water waves;
Dementia and disability, she abandons all moral meaning, there is no shame or reason in her eyes, only the laughter or shouting of desire;
Lick it when the milk spills out at the time of intercourse, eat when hungry, sleep when you are tired, and think about the desire for the next time you have sex. Ah Mei's body has been withdrawn from the management given by social significance, whether it is body movements, language communication ability (ah mei only has a very simple word pronunciation in Ah Mei's film: good, yes, the rest of the vocals are high moans during sexual behavior, and the usual silly laughter), the abnormality of facial emotions, abandoning the evolution of accumulated civilization, and returning to simple and direct like beasts.
Chen Guo let the actor Zeng Meihuizi, who plays A Meizi, deliberately gain weight in the film, and that kind of body is not a normal aesthetic curve or standard beauty, but makes the plump flesh of the body more impactful.
When the camera is directly placed in the narrow cabin, the head-up has no aesthetic choice of position, and others are "rough" to her again and again, but such roughness is the strength that Ah Mei relies on for a living.
As the plot develops, she was born on the boat, once with her young husband to the land to try to integrate into civilization, but all kinds of adaptation, as an ominous person confined alone in the apartment, she buried her head in the fish tank to breathe, as if longing for a comfortable life, until she returned to the water again to pick up customers only regained her vitality, the three husbands took care of her together, inexplicably absurd and harmonious coexistence also made A Mei smile happily.
As their gang continues to make a living, the exposed violations on the one hand force them to leave the docks on the shore and take refuge in more floating distances;
On the other hand, the sexual desire of Ah Mei's body is expanding day by day, and whenever she has a seizure, she trembles and fears in a state of struggle, leaving them both pity and confusion.
It is becoming more and more difficult for them to find guests, to go ashore to buy a long eel as a temporary restraint into the rescue of Ame's sexual organ, and then to swallow the fish cooked after making love, and the fish used as a sexual liberation becomes a filling of appetite in the human mouth, which is both contradictory and sad, just like A-mei's body: it is a tool for capital transactions, and it is also self-achievement and destruction.
Gradually out of control and tragic voyage, Ah Mei even had problems with normal pick-ups, she only wanted to have liberation to jump into the water and be pulled up on the boat. At the end of the movie, when Ah Mei stands alone at the bow of the ship, the movie becomes completely black and white, and the big red cape that flutters in the wind on her body is there any different metaphor?
After reading the above, you should know that "The Three Husbands" is talking about the story of a prostitute.
In fact, at the beginning, I thought that director Chen Guo's switch to making erotic films was a big misunderstanding.
"Three Husbands" is not only the final chapter of Chen Guo's trilogy after "Durian Fluttering" and "Hong Kong Has a Hollywood", but also an extension of the "97 Trilogy" of "Made in Hong Kong", "Last Year's Fireworks Were Particularly Numerous" and "Xiao Lu Xiang".
At this point, the theme of this film is probably self-evident.
Chen Guo's ambitions are great, a small barge on the ocean, stretching jade bodies, attracting three husbands and other men, which is a perverted expression of Hong Kong mud.
In fact, from "Trilogy" to "That Night Early In the Morning, I Sat on the Red VAN driving from Mong Kok to Tai Po", Chen Guo infiltrated his own view of the current situation - Chen Guo who does not talk about current politics, then it is not Chen Guo!
Obviously, the prostitute A Mei in the story is used as a metaphor for Hong Kong.
Ah Mei suffers from two diseases, one is sexual addiction and the other is mental retardation, both of which are also metaphors for Hong Kong's diseases.
Ah Mei's mental retardation not only reflects the purity of her pursuit of money, but also satirizes the hong Kong administrative region's unspeakable mouth, including the lack of self-determination ability... In fact, she is also deeply tormented by sexual addiction, she uses papaya to entertain herself "from love to hate", and even makes the papaya rotten, and then lays out the transition to her final "enlightenment" of sex, that is, the emptiness of the guest's premature ejaculation and the realization of her "quick money" - she has never been metaphysically satisfied.
Therefore, she stripped herself and liberated herself, and instinctively climbed into the sea, but in the end she was still caught by the "three husbands" fishing net, and she was mentally retarded and doomed to be at their mercy.
To deconstruct Chen Guo's formula, I would look at it like this: the rhyme of light comedy, the grassroots viewpoint of authentic Hong Kong, the absurdity or even the heavy taste and bias towards darkness, and the compilation of a story to ask questions or describe his reflection and judgment as a Hong Konger, observed from political or social phenomena and problems.
"Three Husbands" also uses the same equation. The difference is that the film "Three Husbands" seems to have put a larger and denser metaphorical message in it than previous works, and many settings see its symbolic intentions.
For example, the movie connects everything with "sea, land and air":
"Sea" represents freedom, and the play repeatedly emphasizes the description, which is what Ah Mei most yearns for and desires most besides sex, which is also the highest metaphysical value of the film itself;
"Lu" is a symbol of going ashore, but going upstairs does not represent stability, because Hong Kong is difficult to live in, expensive, crowded, and sex from public housing to trucks is a sticker scene;
The theory of "emptiness" is the highest level, which is also equivalent to "emptiness", and this is exactly the situation of Ah Mei and Hong Kong - even if they are rich in sex, they cannot fill the inner void, especially on the basis of no freedom...
In the ending of the movie, the destination of the fishing boat seems to be the final destination. The foreground of the old port, perhaps like the black-and-white picture of the ending, symbolizes that the "Pearl of the Orient" has gradually faded and become a chaotic land with neighboring areas...
In an interview, Chen Guo emphasized that "how you interpret it is your business" and even said, "Or simply look at it as a third level!" However, he also added: "My films have always been social and humanistic, which must reflect my current perception of Hong Kong." ”
Isn't this a kind of wanting to cover up the michigan, not to recognize or not to recognize? Don't you admit that there is a sensitive metaphor in "Three Husbands"?
For example, when Chen Guo talked about the legend of Lu Ting, he confessed that this was to help Zeng Meihuizi understand the role, let her associate A Mei as a fish, or even half a person and half a fish, and even referred to the scene where he wanted to shoot a scene where a dolphin jumped on the boat and Ah Mei held it, but finally worried that the expression was too obvious, and there was no money to do stunts and did not shoot, in addition, he also said that the specific image of mermaids was deliberately avoided in the play, in order to avoid the film becoming a homogeneous image such as "The Shape of Water".
It can be said that the reason why Chen Guo's previous work "Made in Hong Kong" was a blockbuster was promoted by combining many factors such as time and time, geographical advantages, people and so on; Chen Guo repeatedly copied the model of "confused future", needless to say, this is the real and true nibbling of the old book", "Three Husbands" is an old bottle out of the new wine work.
Finally, I would like to say that if "Made in Hong Kong" made Lee Chan-sen, "Three Husbands" is the opposite, largely achieved by Tsang Mei Huizi; if she had not participated, the film effect would have been almost the same. As for the humor and irony of the rest of the male characters in the play, although they also bring quite a surprise, they are far less amazing than Xiaomei.
Zeng Meihuizi was originally from Guizhou, completely unable to understand Cantonese, came to a strange place, the road of life was not familiar, and the environment at that time was like a vacuum for her.
In these processes, you have to overcome some of your strangeness, but this feeling gives ah mei some help to the role, because her role is actually a little isolated and helpless.
After watching the movie, you may be the first to wonder why an actress is willing to sacrifice for the movie in this way, nakedly presenting the body, mind, and spirit in front of the audience's eyes. After precipitation, you will admire Zeng Meihuizi's acting skills, can suck away the erotic feeling of pornography, only show the human level; just like taking away the syrup of muffins, it is no longer a pleasing dessert, only the role of the belly, really less Huigen can not act, no wonder Director Chen Guo waited for 18 years to shoot "Three Husbands", waiting for zeng Meihuizi such an actor.