In Márquez's Memoirs of a Bitter Prostitute, the ninety-year-old protagonist once said, "When I live to the age of ninety, I want to find a young virgin and send myself a night full of crazy love." ”
Above, an old journalist who has had a physical relationship with 514 women in his life, and at the end of his life, he has his last indulgence. This lustful old man, since looking at his body that was no longer young at the age of ninety, suddenly realized his aging and began to feel boundless loneliness and pain.
Looking at the life that passed with the years, the old man said, "Sex is the comfort that a person gives himself when he cannot get love." In Márquez's writing, the old man's desire for sex is a confrontation with age and loneliness.
Also telling the "sex" story of the elderly, the Korean drama "Miss Dionysus" extends its tentacles to the level of fate, society and human nature, and interprets the old age of an elderly sex worker thrillingly.
The film takes the life experience of the old prostitute Su Ying as the main line, and the director tells her "dirty" and "magnificent" life through realistic lenses. In addition, the film also uses the heroine's perspective to look at various marginalized characters in society, such as disabled people, transgender people, empty nesters, abandoned children from the third world, etc., reflecting a series of shocking social problems.
A 65-year-old sex worker, reflecting the "hidden pain" of the elderly's life
The film's heroine, Su Ying, is a 65-year-old sex worker. When she was young, Su Ying worked as a nanny, entered a factory, and was tired of running for her life, and later carried a heavy historical fate and became a "foreign princess", that is, a comfort woman.
During this period, Su Ying had a dewy affair with an American soldier and gave birth to a child. Unable to raise them, they had to give away their children in a hurry.
In order to escape the tragic fate, Su Ying fled all the way from North Korea back to South Korea. Over half a hundred years old, she has no relatives in society, has no pension to take, and has no skills, and lives a precarious life. She loved beauty all her life, unwilling to give up the last decency to pick up garbage and sell scraps, so she simply returned to her old business and started a skin and meat business.
When asked why she was engaged in this business, Su Ying fooled others and deceived herself on the grounds of "saving money for her son abroad". As if only in this way can she bring herself closer to the right track of ordinary people's lives and give herself a little courage to live for the rest of her life.
In the film, Su Yingtian, who is alone in the form of a shadow, shuttles through the park to solicit customers, and once she finds a suitable widow and elderly person, she will go forward and ask the other party if she wants a bottle of "Bao Jiashi", or more directly ask: "Do you want to fall in love with me?" Once she notices that the other party has a heart, Su Ying will add a sentence with ease and familiarity: "I will be good to you, it is not expensive, let's go." ”
In this way, Su Ying took different men through various low-level hotels every day, sometimes in some remote corner.
Among the middle-aged and elderly "practitioners", although Su Ying is old and yellow, her technology is well-known. Therefore, there are often patrons around to come to visit. Of course, Su Ying often encounters men who taunt her for "selling her body" and then flicking her sleeves away.
From the young and beautiful girlhood to the faltering twilight years, from foreign soldiers to local elderly people, going around, decades of experience in the industry has made Su Ying completely nailed to the shame column of "Wind and Dust Girl".
In the film, the director uses calm, restrained camera language to show several "work scenes" of Su Ying. In front of the close-up, Su Ying calmly works hard and looks calm, as if she is doing just an ordinary job, regardless of eroticism.
However, in real life, Su Ying is a "social garbage" that the young population scorns, and it is a "one-acre thin field" that can barely be reclaimed in the eyes of the elderly. There is no doubt that Su Ying is a marginal figure who is outside the mainstream group of society.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to Su Ying, the director also made a realistic and accurate portrayal of the elderly in mainstream society, reflecting their plight in their later years that are different from Su Ying, but in essence there is no way out.
Among them, the most vivid image is those patrons who have had relations with Su Ying. Most of them are old people who have not loved each other for a long time, but they are still willing to follow Su Ying to the hotel. These people all have one thing in common, that is, they are so old that they have no wife, and their families are not willing to accompany them. One of the old men said pessimistically, "They are all people holding number paper and waiting in line to die."
But it is also flowing in these old people that a special vitality flows. Even if they are no longer old enough to support their desires, they still crave "sex". For them, this is seeking a kind of comfort and relief from the outside, but also a kind of internal pursuit and exile, it is free, but also sad and helpless.
The path of redemption led by the benevolence of one thought is "heaven" and "hell"
Sanmao once said: "The heart is like a thousand miles away, and there is no boat to cross." Man, except for self-indulgence, cannot be helped by others. ”
As the saying goes, "The sky does not cross people, but people need to cross themselves." But the superiority of "Miss Dionysus" is that it does not stop at showing the wisdom of "self-crossing", but also makes meaningful philosophical thinking about the causal relationship between "self-crossing" and "ferryman".
In the film, the first person who guides such a low-level old prostitute to the road of redemption and even to save himself is first of all a mixed-race outcast.
This child first appears at the beginning of the film. Su Ying, who has an "occupational disease", goes to the hospital to seek medical treatment, and mistakenly encounters a child who is similar to her son's life- a foreign bastard who has been abandoned by the attending doctor.
From this Filipino boy abandoned by the Koreans, Su Ying saw her own dark-skinned child who was abandoned by American soldiers decades ago. Su Ying, who was moved by compassion, disregarded the overstretched life and took the child home to take care of it.
This is the sympathy of the weak for the weak, and it is also the salvation of the present for the past. It's just that Su Ying didn't expect that it was precisely such a subtle and kind idea that pushed her step by step onto the absurd "killer road". And all this has to start with an old patron called "Change Song".
"Change Song" is a rich man among Su Ying's many patrons, who worked decently when he was young, and received a rich pension when he was old, and every time he appeared, he was dressed in a suit and leather shoes, carrying a body of change, so he got the nickname of "Change Song".
By chance, Su Ying learned from an old friend that Old Song had been hospitalized for a stroke. She went to visit with concern, but found that Old Song's own son and family had moved to the United States, and her grandchildren also disliked him and did not want to come close, leaving only a nurse to take care of him to eat and drink, and his life was miserable.
"It's a shame to be alive... Please... Please help me... I want to die...". "Change Song" had a decent life, and for him, this old insult and loneliness made him more miserable than death. Looking at Old Song paralyzed in bed, it was difficult to even open his mouth, and his cloudy eyes were full of numbness and loneliness, Su Ying moved his heart of compassion.
After a psychological struggle, she poured a bottle of pesticide into the mouth of The Coin Song. This was Su Ying's first killing. Ironically, Lao Song's son did not even check the cause of death, so he cremated his father in a hurry.
Since then, two old patrons have successively put forward a plea for su ying's death, and since then, su ying has never returned on the road of crime. She first pushed a friend who was suffering from Senile dementia off a cliff; then accompanied a lonely old man with no wife and no children to take sleeping pills and died in his sleep.
The old prostitute Su Ying, a person in the mud at the bottom of society, in this extreme, obscure way, became a bodhisattva who "crossed the people". At this point, the connotation of the title "Miss Dionysus" is clear.
In ancient Greek mythology, Dionysus, the "god of wine," was a carnival god who was happy to give alms, singing, dancing, and drinking everywhere he went. Influenced by their divinity, people dare to break taboos, indulge their desires, lift all bonds, and display their most enthusiastic primitive vitality in a state of intoxication.
Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy, interprets this "Dionysian spirit" as a "spirit of madness intertwined with pain and revelry." In the film, this spirit of madness is the confrontation between the painful flesh and the detached soul in the world of the elderly, the interweaving of the thin and cool world and the indulgence of lust.
The examination and insight of marginalized groups has torn away the "fig leaf" of the whole society
Since the bodhisattva crosses the people, who will cross the bodhisattvas?
Su Ying in the film, from beginning to end, presents us with the image of a marginal woman. With her as the center, surrounded by a group of people who have been ignored and excluded by the mainstream world, there are "Bao Jiashi" grandmothers who stand on the street for a living, the elderly who have no one to take care of but desire sex, the disabled neighbors who have a broken leg, and the transgender landlord who is the top player in the bar...
With the help of Su Ying's perspective, the director restores the weakness of these marginal groups in society, such as the transgender landlord, although he looks outstanding and has a sexy body, he can never find a person who really treats her, and everyone regards her as a freak; and a lame neighbor guy, even if he looks handsome and lives seriously, it is inevitable that he will be treated differently with colored glasses.
But in real life, these people are completely like normal people, they have their own work interests, run their own joys and sorrows, but because they are expelled by the mainstream, they can only live in a corner and hug the group to keep warm.
Lu Yao once said: "People would rather care about the eating, drinking, and frivolous skin of a crappy movie actor than understand the turbulent inner world of an ordinary person." ”
Ordinary people are still like this, and it is even more difficult for marginalized people to be truly heard. As Su Ying said to reporters in an interview: "People don't care about what is true, they just pick what they want to hear." ”
But even though there are no more possibilities and choices in life, Su Ying is still completing redemption in her own way. There is a direct shot in the film that is very shocking.
After sending away the lonely old man who pleaded to be euthanized, Su Ying received the entire inheritance left for her by the other party, but Su Ying did not take the money for herself, but donated it to the temple.
Before the Buddhist hall, Su Ying, who had completed the donation, folded her hands and looked pious, and became one with the Guanyin statue of the Pudu sentient beings behind her. Under the lens of the large elevation angle, Su Ying looks solemn and sacred. The old stupas are out of place with the new modern high-rises, foreshadowing the irreconcilable tragedy of suying and mainstream society.
In the face of the police who came to the door, Su Ying was neither sad nor explained, but was relieved, looking at the flying snow outside the window, she whispered: "If only I could go to prison in the spring, it would be too cold in winter, but it doesn't matter, the nursing home can't afford to go, go to prison." ”
No one paid any attention to her nagging, and she went quietly.
The last scene of the film is a line of small print on the columbarium after Su Ying's death, "Deceased, Leung Mi Sook." 1950. 6. 19——2017.10.5”。 When Su Ying finally died, the name she used was finally not the name of FengChenhua. If you look more closely, you will find that the owner of the dagger on the side of Su Ying does not even have a date of birth... But when everything is dusted, who really cares?
The Latin soundtrack "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas," which recurred in "Fancy Years", once again rings at the end of the film, as if to calmly tell: Don't these people who have been beaten to the bottom of life deserve to have their own fancy years?
END.
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