The other day, the French César Awards announced the list of nominations, and french actress Isabelle Huppel starred in "Her" and François Oujong's "Franz" led with ten nominations.
As a typical feminist film, "She" has long been in the circle of friends last year, while another "Franz", which also received ten nominations, is unknown.
"She" was active in the ticket circle for a while, which simply gave a few buckets of chicken blood to the feminists in the circle of friends, in contrast, "Franz" touched people's hearts with a small story in a very resonant background.
Director François Ou Rong retained his usual suspenseful style, leaving the film suspenseful but not unappetizing, unveiling the knots at the right time, and giving the audience to think.
The last time Euron was stunning Summer was in his 2012 suspense film "Entering the House". The combination of eerie stories, real worlds and imaginary worlds, supplemented by an exploration of human nature, is very out of the ordinary.
Although "Franz" did not make people drop their jaws, the director told a completely different story from the past while retaining his own style.
The film is adapted from a play, the fiancé of the German woman Anna Franz died in France in world war I, a young man named Andrian claimed to be a good friend of Franz when he studied in France, and specially came from France to pay tribute to Franz, bringing a lot of happiness to Anna and Andrian's parents.
But the truth is far from this, and the fragile Andrian cannot bear the pain of the truth, and rushes back to France, and Anna, who has already developed feelings for Andrian, decides to go to France to find him after several entanglements. It was difficult to find Andrian, but found that he was already married and left in a hurry like Andrian had done before.
The narrative of the story has always left suspense for the audience, revealing the big secret before Andrian left Germany, and the second half of the story is based on Anna's experience of going to France to find Andrian, the ending is very brief, but it still sets a somewhat gratifying ending, and also makes the audience who has been in the clouds, Mao Sai suddenly open.
Although the heroine is not the most exquisite of the facial features, but mixed with Adjani's eyes and Coco Rocha's demeanor, perhaps the Best Newcomer Award in Venice awarded not only her acting skills, but also her beauty.
Visually, the most prominent feature of the film is that almost the entire film uses black and white tones. According to the director, when filming, he found that the color of the whole picture was too bright to match this slightly heavy story, so black and white were used.
Whenever the atmosphere of the film turns slightly to light and full of life, the picture will change from black and white to color, and the film's several changes in tone are also very smooth and dreamy.
The hero and heroine go out for a walk for the first time, the two pass through a cave, after leaving the cave, the color of the surrounding scenery gradually appears, and the two have the first chat without baggage.
Since then, several tone changes have used panning, and the camera rotates a week back to the original position and the picture becomes color, but the next few color times are extremely short, so the whole film seems a little depressed most of the time.
The biggest theme of the film is still war, and all emotions are brewed and the story unfolds on the premise of war. While the general story is structured in terms of succession and transition, "Franz" has a symmetrical structure based on the two locations of Germany and France.
So almost all the elements in the film are symmetrical, the cold eyes of the foreigners, the two protagonists looking for each other and the loss of the self. The most obvious is the majestic chorus of the national anthem in two taverns, the first in a German tavern and the second in a French tavern. The peoples of the two countries sang of their motherland and warriors with the same heart, and were full of hatred for each other's country.
China has also had a history of being invaded, and Summer can almost empathize with that sentiment, the people of both countries do not believe that their country is wrong, and the mood of the two peoples is almost exactly the same regardless of the language and cultural differences.
And the whole story is also made possible by reflecting on this emotion. As Anna said, life always goes on. It also reminds Summer of the recent hit IP drama "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" in bai and shallow words, about a trip to the children's private affair, thousands of years later, there should be a day of relief.
The whole film is the journey that the two protagonists have learned to let go. The male protagonist in the first half gives the heroine the yearning of life, and the heroine in the second half gives the male protagonist the strength to live.
Another very important element in the film is art, compared to the real dialogue and character relationship, the connotation of using art expression seems to be more obscure, but it is not uninterpretable, and after a little interpretation, I feel that the artistic elements are used reasonably and appropriately.
Although Andrian and Franz did not have any direct contact, the two were actually very similar, liking poetry, music, and appreciating painting.
The director also used artistic elements to make two young people who did not know each other at all socialize. For example, the imaginary scene where Andrian directs Franz to play the violin, recites the poem that Franz gave to Anna through Andrian's mouth, and the painting "Suicide Man" that plays an important role in promoting the plot.
Despite the war between Germany and France, the two peoples were very different in language and personality, but with art as a bridge, each individual became equal and communicative.
Perhaps the most bizarre element of this is Manet's "Suicide Man", which inherits the style of the director's previous films. Andrian loves the painting, and Anna concludes by saying that it gives her the strength to live. At first, Summer did not understand why such a terrible painting had rekindled the hopes of both the male and female protagonists.
Later, it suddenly dawned on me that since both the male and female protagonists have experienced the process of abandoning the past and re-living in the film, then "suicide" means the strangulation of incorrect attitudes towards life, thus gaining a new life.
Accustomed to watching commercial movies that make people's blood boil in minutes, such a slow narrative and a very grand theme is not the first choice for watching movies, but as the Korean drama "Pinocchio" says, it is more important than what the audience "wants to know" and "should know".
So although "She" earned enough eyeballs last year, the low-key "Franz" is the intended winner.