As the biggest dark horse in the Spring Festival file in 2021, Jia Ling's "Hello, Li Huanying" was released for 25 days, with a total box office of 5.13 billion yuan, surpassing "The Devil Boy of Nezha" and ranking second in the box office in Chinese film history.
The great success of "Hello, Li Huanying" has enabled Jia Ling to win the title of the first female director at the domestic box office, and also impacted the title of the world's first box office female director. At present, this record is temporarily maintained by Hollywood female director Patti Jenkins with the DC comic film "Wonder Woman", with a global box office of 5.3 billion yuan (about 8.21 US dollars), and jia Ling is only less than 200 million yuan away from the world's first female director at the box office.
This year's Spring Festival file, the competitor of "Hello, Li Huanying" is Chen Sicheng's "Detective Chinatown 3", which makes the former have more female narratives to overcome male discourse in addition to box office success. As we all know, such as 36D, elevator beating female nurses, Wang Baoqiang shouting "Xiaolin sauce" bridge section, so that "Detective Chinatown 3" encountered doubts, the box office was also surpassed.
Just as "Hello, Li Huanying" sang the box office triumph, a Chinese female director appeared in front of everyone in another posture. At the 78th Golden Globe Awards, Zhao Ting won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for "No Place to Stay". The issues that the film focuses on, as well as the authorial techniques presented by Zhao Ting in her works, make the film both artistic and humanistic, and the sword refers to the Oscar.
For a time, female directors, especially Chinese-speaking female directors, became the focus of discussion.
Either the emotional start, or the artistic breakthrough
In the Hollywood system, the voice in film is mostly controlled by large male-dominated studios. If female directors want to enter the mainstream vision, they must slowly merge into the tributary posture through a different emotional perspective and another set of artistic discourse logic.
Looking back at the famous female directors in the world, Agnès Varda, Margaret Duras, Sophia Coppola, Catherine Bigelow, are closely related to the high artistic and authorial expression of the image.
Margaret Duras, for example, collaborated with a number of masters such as Alan René with her unique narcissistic brushstrokes; Agnès Varda devoted herself mainly to documentary films, becoming a powerful female cadre of the Left Bank. Lenny Riefenstahl was questioned for his pro-Nazi political stance.
In short, female directors enter the public eye with delicate emotions, avant-garde techniques, and even avant-garde creative concepts. These characteristics are also reflected in Chinese female directors.
Agnès Varda's mainland female directors in the new Chinese period are presented in film history in the form of intergenerational groups: from the third generation to the sixth generation, they are decomposed into individual creators, and gradually integrate into the commercial tide after the millennium. As a third-generation director, Wang Ping is also the first female director in New China. Although the story content still focuses on the grand era narrative, it breaks the face-making tendency in the character portrayal and deeply shows the inner activities of the characters. In 1958, she directed the film "The Story of Liubao", which focused on the love story of an active soldier during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and set a precedent for revolutionary lyric poetry style with a small view, and the interlude "Nine Nine Sunny Days" was widely sung. Another spy film he directed, "The Eternal Wave", also strives to depict the heart of the characters under the premise of ensuring the twists and turns of the plot.
Among the fourth generation of directors of "The Story of Liubao", the proportion of female directors has expanded, and at the same time, in the field of film theory research, there have also been achievements. For example, Zhang Nunxin, the director of "Sand Gull" and "Youth Festival", co-wrote "On the Modernization of Film Language" with her husband Li Tuo. At this time, female directors were quite partial to realism. Wang Haowei has the taste of "female laoshe in the film industry", and his films have a strong Beijing flavor, focusing on family life in the era, such as "Look at this family", "Xizhao Street", "Divorce" and so on. At the same time, the film "Oh, Xiangxue", adapted from Tie Ning's novel of the same name, also filled the gap in children's films. Another director, Shi Shujun, focused earlier on the narrative of Chinese youth campuses. "Female College Dormitory" tells the story of female students in different backgrounds understanding each other and growing up together; "Missing Female Middle School Students" focuses on a group of teenagers who have experienced youth pain such as early love and lost love; "The Death of Female College Students" is even more attacking the hypocrisy and indifference of some people in social life.
In addition to the improvement of the practical significance of "Look at this Family", the greatest value of the fourth generation of female directors is to consciously integrate feminist thinking into the expression of the times, which has to mention Huang Shuqin's "Man, Ghost, Love" created in 1987. The film is called a "feminist film" in the true sense of the word, and it can be regarded as a female version of "Overlord Farewell". The story starts in the 1950s and continues to after the "Cultural Revolution", taking the heroine Xiao Qiuyun's experience of learning drama as a clue, depicting a woman who dedicates her life to the art of opera, recording the process of female resistance and self-discovery, and the spiritual/artistic void realm she will inevitably go to.
"Man, Ghost, Love" is the fifth generation of female directors, and regional culture has become the focus of the narrative. Peng Xiaolian set the story in Shanghai and filmed the "Shanghai Trilogy" - "Pretend No Feeling", "Beautiful Shanghai", "Shanghai Rumba" - the first two tell the intergenerational relationship between three generations of women, the latter is a retrospective of the illusion of light and shadow in old Shanghai; director Mei Lisi specializes in national films, such as "Sad Brooke". During this period, the identity of the female director was better integrated with the female narrative conveyed in the film. Women generally tell women's stories in a feminine tone, which is typical of this period.
The most important female director in the "fifth generation" of "Beautiful Shanghai" is none other than Li Shaohong. It is worth mentioning that Li Shaohong's works are more related to the struggle of the father generation and the child generation in the discourse of male directors. In 1990, Li Shaohong directed the film "Bloody Morning". The film still attacks China's feudal ignorance at the macro level, sublimating the sadness of human nature to the peak; on the micro level, this pre-publicized murder case involves social issues such as arranged marriages, son preference, and moral inferiority, which are precisely the problems faced by China in the transition period. In addition, non-linear narrative is also a major highlight in terms of technique. Intergenerational conflict also continued in li Shaohong's later filmmaking. For example, in 1992, he directed "Forty Not Confused", which tells the story between a father and a son who appeared in the countryside. The 1995 film "Red Pink" is also like this, focusing on the new life of the two Women in the Qinglou after liberation.
In the period of the rise of the sixth generation of directors, we were surprised to find that this kind of surging rebellious discourse just cut off the lifeblood of the gentle female director, making it prohibitive. Female directors of this period no longer enter the narrative system of "six generations". In the promotion of humanistic emotions, the role of female directors in Hong Kong and Taiwan is even greater. In the 1970s, "Lady Dong", filmed by Tang Shuxuan, told an ancient folk story with modern female views and existential brushstrokes, and its avant-garde nature is self-evident.
"Mrs. Dong"
Since then, the pioneer banner of Hong Kong female directors has fallen into the hands of Hui Anhua. Xu Anhua's early works still lie in the use of technique, especially the structure of the play within a play, such as "Crazy Robbery" and "A Thousand Words". In the later period, it gradually tended to be humanistic care, such as "Woman Forty", "Man Forty", "Half Life", "Sister Tao", "Day and Night in Tin Shui Wai" and so on.
In terms of Taiwanese films, the most well-known female director is Zhang Aijia. In 1995, Zhang Aijia wrote and directed his own "Little Girl Fishing", and the screenwriter also gathered Yan Geling and Li An to tell the story of illegal immigration in the United States. In 2004, his self-directed and self-performed work "20 30 40" was shortlisted for the main competition section of the Berlin Film Festival and attracted international attention. Speaking of Zhang Aijia's recent word-of-mouth works, it is the self-directed and self-acting "Love and Affection" in 2017. The description of the marriage and love concept of three generations of women in the film, as well as the details of natural life, all show the strengths of female directors.
After the millennium, the individuality of female directors has become stronger. Ning Ying's "Beijing Trilogy", "Heavenly Bath" filmed by Chen Chong, who acted and directed by Youze... It is still a work with strong human and critical colors.
Xu Jinglei is an alternative female director. In 2003's "My Dad and Me" and 2004's "Letter from a Strange Woman," she retained the last shred of delicacy of a female director. After that, it is the posture of an independent woman who chases the market and embarks on another path.
"Small times" writing under big business
After the millennium, with the acceleration of the process of marketization of mainland films and the development of genre films, the expression space of female directors has been compressed, and the box office has become a place where soldiers must compete.
In 2010, Xu Jinglei became the first Chinese female director in mainland China to gross more than 100 million yuan with her self-directed and self-starred "Dulala Promotion". From 2010 to the Spring Festival in 2021, the box office of Chinese female directors has undergone several batches of improvements, playing a role in leading the development of the film genre.
・The chick boom after the big heroine of the city
In 2010, "Dulala Promotion" was a hit. This story about the growth of the workplace not only resonated with the audience, but also popularized a film genre to the mainland market - chick movies.
The plot of such works is relatively relaxed and romantic, the protagonist takes the female character as the core, the male retreats into the supporting role, the story focuses on the love fairy tales of the two, and most of them are set in the fashion city and leisurely countryside. In the years that followed, chick movies and urban romance films became the favorite of young audiences, and they were also martial arts venues for female directors to use their talents.
After that, male directors also looked at the advantages of chick movies, and works such as "33 Days of Lost Love", "Zhiming and Chunjiao", and "Single Men and Women" came into being.
In terms of female directors, Jin Yimeng is the budding nurturer of domestic chick movies. In 2009, Jin Yimeng's "Very Perfect" was a typical chick movie, and the final box office was nearly 96 million yuan. By 2013, she had grossed another 179 million with One Night Surprise.
The other person in "Very Perfect" is Huang Zhenzhen, who is a literary and commercial. Speaking of Huang Zhenzhen, his "Woman's Words", "Man's Thing" and "Sixth Floor Back seat" filmed in Hong Kong all have a distinct realist female color. However, after going north, Huang Zhenzhen began to focus on the narrative of female group portraits, shooting "Girlfriend" and "The Five Years That Were Stolen", with box offices of 204 million and 149 million respectively. Despite the good market response, the fixed model of three women and one play, coupled with the stereotypical expression of women's urban life, makes Huang Zhenzhen's works in this period lose the real temperature of life.
The climax of the "Man This Thing" chick movie was released in 2013, directed by Xue Xiaolu and starring Tang Wei. The film had a good box office reputation that year, with a Douban score of 7.3, a cumulative box office of 520 million yuan, and the sequel "Beijing Meets Seattle Love Letter" released in 2016 received 785 million box office. Most importantly, the film touches on the middle-class narrative, and at the same time integrates the family concepts of the gold worshipper and the middle class, which is a work that touches on real economic life.
After that, the chick movie did not stir up too much splash, and even Xu Jinglei's "Intimate Enemy" was cold. Because of the facial female image and the dog-blood love section of the routine, the chick movie lost its former vitality. • Youth Trauma Film In 2013, "To the Youth We Will Eventually Pass Away", directed by Zhao Wei, achieved a high box office performance of 719 million yuan, which not only made Zhao Wei complete the transformation from actor to director, but also made the campus youth film become an obvious school, which caused a lot of sensation at the time. The chick movie seeks change, and Zhao Wei uses its "variant" to complete a big counterattack. Chick movies, coupled with the characteristics of the times, or the individual's memories of the times, constitute the background of youth trauma films.
The wave of youth films set off by women is meaningful, but in the market's catch-up to the boom, the weakness of the original chick movies and the arbitrariness of the references in the youth film era are gradually revealed. "To Youth" brings more emotional writing about "small times", and eventually falls into the remembrance of self-emotion, becoming the lightest memory that the audience does not want to bear.
It was not until 2018 that Rene Liu's "Later Us" ushered in a return to the light of the "small era" that advocated youth nostalgia. With the IP advantage of the classic song "Later" and Rene Liu's personal reputation in Taiwanese literary and art films, "Later Us" made Rene Liu the first female director of the 1 billion box office club with 1.362 billion yuan, and also the highest-grossing female director of Chinese films before Jia Ling. However, the misunderstanding of commercial filmmakers about literature and art is also highlighted in this work. I think that black and white is literature and art, and I think that dullness is connotation. When the audience reacted, they found that the narrative that went around was just a blank check for the venting of youthful emotions.
The question of whether female directors can carry a heavy historical narrative was answered by Li Fangfang's "No Questions Asked". In the end, the film grossed 754 million, and the story rose from the previous small era to the big era. About the return of the south to the north, about the feelings of home and country and the humanistic spirit, is the emotional value of this movie. But this kind of historical narrative is still a side snoop, the director wrapped that era with love, and annotated the lives of several protagonists with the portraits of the masters of that era, and finally avoided the positive encounter with history.
Female narrative under the wrapping of genre The mainstream narrative of female directors in the new millennium is still the expression of love under business. Overall, female directors are better at and more acceptable works by the public, generally for comedy and romance films. But the contradiction is also highlighted: in the male-dominated commercial market, after the female directors enter, will the unique expressions of women themselves and the irreplaceable status of female directors be discounted? Take "Living Together in Time", for example, the box office is as high as 900 million yuan, but few audiences go to the theater to pay attention to this film because of the female director Suren. Even in the behind-the-scenes publicity, we also focus on Xu Zheng's forward-looking market vision.
In the writing of the times, women's creation is more of an emotional expression, and it forms a climax here in "Hello, Li Huanying". The success of "Hello, Lee Huan Ying" in the market is self-evident. But it is worth mentioning the mutual support of female directors and female actors, which has also moved from behind the scenes to the foreground. This kind of small ecology of mainland films, which is completely supported by women, can also be regarded as a new thing.
Business is consuming to the expression of female directors. Li Shaohong and Yan Geling's "A-Ma Ge is a City", the "Madonna Complex" is somewhat flooded; Xue Xiaolu's "Whistleblower" tries to open the door to domestic political thrillers, and the results are chaotic and the box office is not satisfactory. Take Li Yu, for example, the debut feature film "This Summer" focuses on lesbians and won the Elvira Nothari Award at the 58th Venice Film Festival. After that, he cooperated with Fan Bingbing in "Apple", "Guanyin Mountain" and "Secondary Exposure", and was known as the hero director who taught "Fan Ye" to acting. However, in "Everything Grows", Li Yu also appeared weak. The cold feeling of the previous images and contents is missing. This year's film "Sunshine Robber" with Ma Li and Song Jia, I don't know if it will give people a different surprise.
Throughout the country, there are still some female directors who insist on artistic creation. Yang Lina's "Spring Tide" maintains a certain artistic expression under the mainstream vision; Yang Mingming's "Tender Love History" shows the lives of the mother and daughter in Beijing Hutongkou, and the final lost shot is also an exploration of the emotions of female citizens; Wen Yan, who has long been a filmmaker of Diao Yinan, was shortlisted for the Venice Film Festival with "Carnival" in 2017 and won the 14-year-old Wen Qi. In addition, Ma Li's "Prisoner", Wang Yichun's "What's in the Black Place", Bai Xue's "Over Spring", Xiang Zi's "Goodbye Nanping Evening Bell", Wang Limei's "The First Parting", etc., let the audience see the artistic persistence of female directors under the gender discourse.
When discussing Chinese female directors, we still divide the mainstream (high commercial value) and non-mainstream (often contrary to commercial art) by box office level. From the perspective of female directors who have exceeded 100 million, Xu Jinglei, Liu Ruoying, and Jia Ling all have strong economic attributes, but Xue Xiaolu is still trying his best to maintain the balance between business and art. However, when female directors advanced to the mainstream, their attribution became capital operation, commercial interests, and even jumped out of the discourse of film art, making film creation a speculative production. Choosing a position between business and art is a must-make choice for every director. I only hope that while paying attention to Jia Ling, I also pay more attention to Zhao Ting; while paying attention to the box office record of "Hello, Li Huanying", I can also pay attention to the female narrative behind the film and cherish the difficulty of female expression.
【Text/He Thought】