A few days ago, director Peng Haoxiang sent a Weibo, lamenting "the 10th anniversary of The Encounter of Zhiming Chunjiao", and I realized that "Zhiming and Chunjiao" has been ten years. Subsequently, Yu Wenle also posted a Weibo post, and also mentioned the sentence "n 55!w!".
Looking at the comments of netizens, they also grew up with the movie, and even some people revisited the film's filming location.
Just as Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpe starred in the "Love In" series of love runs, the "Zhiming and Chunjiao" series also accompanied the audience for ten years, and the couple became friends for the audience for ten years. It seems to be a romance film, but in fact, the relationship between the two is more family than love, and the audience can feel their growth and realize their changes, which is quite resonant.
The three-degree interpretation of Zhang Zhiming, played by Yu Wenle, and Yu Chunjiao, played by Yang Qianwei, are full of tacit understanding, and they are more and more mature in the grasp of the character's personality, and when watching the movie, they will even forget whether the actor is performing the role or projecting themselves, as if they are real couples in real life.
One of the reasons I like Peng Haoxiang's films is that his dialogue is not pretentious, unlike the "false confession" dialogue of many movies today, the actors themselves may not believe it.
Peng Haoxiang likes to eavesdrop on couples arguing in a tea restaurant in Hong Kong to conceive the script. He once said that if there are too many unnecessary details, it is like lying. The script needs to move itself first and then find out the reason, not to move the audience. Of course, storytelling should not rely entirely on dialogue, but also need to express the emotional state of the characters through expressions and body language. It is precisely because of these qualities that the "Zhiming and Chunjiao" series can explore the relationship between men and women.
In terms of age setting, it is different from other romance films, which is the love relationship between older leftover women and young, immature leftover men, and you can see how they view a relationship from different gender and age perspectives. Chunjiao has always been jealous of her age being older than Zhiming, and always feels that Zhiming is like a child who has not grown up and is emotionally insecure.
The first film, "Zhiming and Chunjiao", begins with a love affair with smoke and is also an extension of Pang's idea of implementing the new Smoking (Public Health) Ordinance amendments by the Hong Kong government in 2007. It tells the story of two smoking men and women, Cheung Chi Ming (Yu Wenle), two smoking men and women in Hong Kong's indoor smoking environment, Anderson Yu Chunjiao (Miriam Yeung) who meet in the outdoor smoking area in the back alley, and open the topic by lighting a cigarette, developing a love story.
Peng Haoxiang's storytelling method in the first part belongs to the segmented narrative of "scattering the gods and not scattering", separating the days when Zhiming and Chunjiao met, and then inserting documentary-style personal comments on the relationship between men and women, which seems to be careless and indifferent to the narrative method, but it is full of natural and bright places.
Whether it's a cigarette warning or a text message exchange joke, it's real and playful. Men and women are jealous of each other, and the bridge section that gives companionship when they are lost to each other further portrays the emotional transition from strangers to lovers.
In the classic plot of this part, Zhiming plays with a cigarette box, which reads "Warning: Smoking can cause impotence" and a downward folded cigarette, instantly sending a "in 55!" W !” A text message to Chun Jiao.
This set of movies not only tells us that the content of text messages and cigarette packs need to be looked at backwards, but also that feelings need to be transposed and look at problems in reverse, and from time to time the director's little cleverness is revealed.
The second part, "Chunjiao and Zhiming", tells the story of the love experience of Chunjiao and Zhiming after they went to the mainland to work separately and then met again in Beijing. The focus is on the issues of new love and old love, love and habit.
As a co-production, it moved the background to Beijing, taking advantage of the cultural differences between the mainland and Hong Kong, but unfortunately using various "commercial calculations" to cater to the tastes of audiences on both sides, less pure than the first part, preventing the film from being able to go to a higher level.
The story background of the third "Chunjiao Saves Zhiming" has moved back to Hong Kong, telling the story of Chunjiao and Zhiming who have walked together for eight years, once again feeling each other's "inappropriateness", and their feelings have to be tested.
With the basis of the first two episodes, it is necessary to go deeper in the character portrayal, reflect the differences between the two sides through the small things in life, the woman pursues a sense of security, and the man continues to grow up to cause misunderstandings.
"Growing up" Zhiming is one of the themes throughout the series, and in the second episode, Yuyou asks Zhiming if he wants children? Zhiming replied: "I haven't grown up since high school, isn't it cruel for you to let one child take care of another child?" It was not until the third episode that Zhiming's concept of having and raising children began to mature.
"You don't mind if I'm bigger than you?" "You're bigger than me, but I'm taller than you."
There are a lot of small details, golden sentences, rotten stems and even the horror story at the beginning of each episode in the whole series - the first part of the "trunk hides the body", the second part of the "Serial Kefu" and the third part of the "Toddler Just Ate The Child", remember that every time I watch it in the cinema, the audience who is not familiar with Peng Haoxiang always thinks that they have entered the wrong movie hall.
There are also many subtleties between the three parts of the series, and there is no lack of echoes and progressions, such as putting dry ice in the toilet is Zhiming's special habit. In the first episode, he plays with Chunjiao, and the two happily experience the bathroom in "Wonderland" together. In the second episode, Zhiming and Shang Youyou play with toilet dry ice, and the latter shows resistance, comparing the difference in values between Zhiming's two girlfriends.
Also in "Zhiming and Chunjiao", Chunjiao asked Zhiming, "Why can't Hong Kong see UFOs?" Towards the end of the film, the two have each other in each other's eyes, so they miss the flash of UFO (see picture below).
In the third episode of "Chunjiao Saves Zhiming", Chunjiao considers breaking up, so she sees the UFO. But hundreds of trillions of extraterrestrial operations can't answer human emotional questions, because "Love off the cuff" (the english title of the third episode) - "off the cuff" is casual, "cuff" is handcuffs, all in Chunjiao herself.
Speaking of which, the English names of the trilogy are quite learned, using the same sentence pattern, the first English name "Love in a Puff" refers to "love produced in the smoke" corresponding to Zhiming and Chunjiao when they met when smoking, and also expressed the meaning of love illusory and ethereal;
The second part, Love in the Buff, refers to "the troubles of love";
The literal meaning of the third part has been mentioned above, and the pun of the literal meaning has been taken into account.
Then whenever their emotional relationship changes, they will always sing a song that reflects their state of mind on KTV, whether it is the first "The Last Rose" (Zhen Ni), the second part of "Don't Ask Me Who I Am" (Wang Xinping) or the third part of "When I Think of You" (Chen Baiqiang).
There is also the dog named "Then" that ChunJiao has, which is often used in movies to make harmonic sounds in dialogue. Zhi Ming is allergic to dog hair, and when the two live together, "then" has been at Chunjiao's house. In order to save Chunjiao, Zhiming even agreed to let "then" enter their house.
Moreover, the more classic is the interesting mobile phone ringtone in the film", "Your aunt picks you, you abba picks you up", the first is Chunjiao's ringtone, the second Zhiming also changed the ringtone to it, and the third episode is the same.
Finally, I still have to sigh. If you want to choose the best, most solid and most realistic film characters portrayed by Chinese films in the past decade, then I really can't think of a more convincing role than Zhiming and Chunjiao. We like to watch the two actors perform their daily lives naturally and lively, and in these life fragments, they also reflect Peng Haoxiang's cold-eyed and sharp-tongued modern view of love.