A gentle title, but hiding a crazy bloody killing.
That was my first impression of the film.
"Victoria One" is a horror movie to accuse hong Kong real estate developers of unscrupulousness, in the context of similarity, it is also more or less related.
After "Don't Let Anyone Enter", I once again committed the crime of estimating the wrong mistake, people are obviously bloody films, but I think that blood and horror are the same.
I think that the distinction between a bloody film and a thriller film should be made in this way: there is no chance for the victim to escape or reverse the situation, and it is the bloody film that only keeps inking on the process of murder; it is a thriller that attaches the weak turn or escape possibility of the victim in the process of killing, so that the audience continues to fear in the unknown situation.
The above two types of who are high and who are low are not legally wrong, but in general, it is similar to the difference between funny and humorous, and if I want to choose, I personally still like the latter a little more.
Back to the topic of the movie, the biggest feeling left to me after watching "Victoria One" is that this movie is really not bad, and the humanistic issue film that should have been a little serious and emotional can actually become a bloody and critical film under Peng Haoxiang's clever arrangement.
And the content contained in the film itself is not only the entertainment nature of killing, but also has a deep irony behind Hong Kong's magnificent street scenes.
Basically, there are two themes to be expressed in this film, one is the criticism of the rapid rise in property prices in Hong Kong, and the other is, of course, to show cruelty through killing.
However, what has to be admired is that the director skillfully choreographed but perfectly integrated these two themes, not only let the audience feel that the focus of the film wants to express is the sadness behind the bustling Hong Kong, but also take into account the nature of the entertainment film killing scenes, I can only say that Peng Dao you are really too "super god".
The key to the film's ability to perfectly blend these two themes lies in the interspersed plot.
It begins with a sudden and confusingly brutal murder, and as the time and space background of the story is outlined in a reminiscent way, when the audience slowly integrates into the meaning to be expressed behind the movie, it suddenly brings back the murder scene to perform a wonderful killing scene.
After going back and forth like this a few times, the audience will gradually bring out the only mystery of the film from the five-mile fog - what is the heroine's motive for killing? Such a technique can not only avoid the flat and direct narrative and take into account the suspense component, but also will not overemphasize the murder scene and ignore the theme of the film to be criticized, sometimes bloody and sometimes sensual, there is a kind of climax and continuous magic, both content depth and sensory stimulation.
Counting the heroines have killed 11 people in the movie, the methods of killing people are the most primitive, in order to lengthen the time of the death of the characters, so that the bloody violence can be displayed in front of the audience.
I remember that there is a sentence in "Exodus" directed by Peng Haoxiang:
"It turns out that the facts are absurd to a certain extent and no one will believe it." That movie wasn't about absurdity, it was about no one believing. ”
But "Victoria One" is about absurdity, and the effect is not believed. But unlike many viewers who think that the story is too fake, I understand Director Peng's approach, and this movie can only be made like this.
The heroine does not actually need a very, very strong motive to kill people, because this is just a metaphor, through the bloody murder to show the cruelty of the building - and the blood behind the behavior of the building is invisible. A film that is clearly fictional begins with a line of subtitles that no one believes: based on the real thing. In addition to being a kind of humor, it also reminds the audience to take away the seemingly irrational surface, but there is a real meaning in it.
The empty mirror photographs the densely packed buildings of the city, including high-rise buildings, public housing, and tenement buildings, which can reflect the appearance of the city, but fail to create a sense of oppression.
How to shoot these empty shots and how to intersperse these empty shots into the narrative can help create a sense of distortion and oppression? This is the reason why Peng Haoxiang is one step faster.
When the heroine and her colleagues discuss how to steal company information to earn extra money, the camera shoots the characters at a low angle, highlighting the oppression of the buildings on them, in addition to explaining the plot with dialogue, but also telling the story with pictures. However, the sense of oppression created by the use of film language in the subsequent film is not enough.
The film also uses scene scheduling to strengthen the psychological state of the heroine, but the awareness is insufficient.
When the heroine meets her boyfriend, the two can only go to the Clock Hotel. The heroine has no unit of her own, no space of her own, and much intimacy can only be carried out in the rented hotel. While she waits for her boyfriend in the room, the scene schedules through the reflection of the mirror, reflecting the narrowness of the space, reflecting the heroine and her in the mirror.
Using the mirror as a symbol is the most obvious way to reflect the multiple psychological states of the characters, but what does this scene have to do with this scene? Her psychological state does not change strongly in this scene. When Ah Yan can afford the down payment, but still can't buy a house, the film reflects her in a mirror, creating a narrow and oppressive space with the foreground such as corners and pillars, and the heroine bears the blow and her mood changes.
As for the bloody scenes of the film, I had previously suspected that Director Peng had referred to the style of the American writer Chuck Paranick.
The film satirizes the shady scene behind the soaring real estate in Hong Kong, which is also the focus of the film.
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The fate of the heroine Teresa Teng is also quite a lot, shouldering a family plan, the director deliberately arranged to win the sympathy of the audience.
The essence of "Victoria One" is actually quite critical of Hong Kong's social inequality but the superficial high-rise buildings are lined up, but behind this gorgeous street scene has been built at the expense of the warmth of countless vulnerable Hong Kong citizens, just like stepping on the corpses of others.
So using the heroine Ah Yan's growth background and life style, let the audience realize that Hong Kong is not just a business and sightseeing paradise that we see on the surface.
The irony is that there are more people surviving in this city, and the film may have an over-exaggerated element to some extent, but in the capitalist society where the rich and the poor are uneven, the richer they invest, the richer they are, how can the middle class support their families, and the poor can live in peace and demand food and clothing.
In this cruel society, those who build houses cannot afford to buy houses and get occupational diseases, but they cannot borrow money for others. That's where the absurdity lies.
The heroine's grandfather is a retired seaman, and in the heroine's childhood, she always liked to sit by the sea and watch the sea.
In addition, when the heroine had a colleague who asked her why she had to buy a sea-view unit, another colleague of hers replied on her behalf because of the childhood complex. So we mistakenly think that the heroine is so obsessed with the seaview unit and finally kills the machine, which is also because of her so-called childhood complex.
In fact, it can be said that this is not the case at all. The childhood complex is just an excuse for the heroine to beautify her materialistic desires, and a person who gets insurance compensation by killing his father has any childhood complex to speak of. In fact, the director arranged several characters to question the heroine's idea of buying a house - why not buy a cheaper one. This shows that even the director does not believe it.
At the same time, this is also the biggest suspense point lies in the heroine Ah Chang's motive for killing, why he wanted to kill these irrelevant households so cruelly (and the only relevant reason).
This part is actually not easy for the audience to perceive in the early background of Ah Yan's growth, and sure enough, a movie that can make the audience continue to doubt and suddenly realize is a good suspense movie.
It turns out that the beginning of the movie is the mystery "a crazy city, to survive it needs to become more crazy than it", but how many people can immediately understand the connection between this passage and the motive of killing? This film is based on real people and real events, and the film is also criticizing the chaos of Hong Kong society, such as second milk, affair, promiscuity, and drug abuse, which is full of irony.
The film tries to show that the reason why Ah Yan pursued the tall family building in this way, in addition to being affected by the hong Kong people's speculation at that time, there was a more personal reason: she wanted to buy her own unaffordable mansion because she grew up living in the old tenement building that was about to be closed, and day after day she watched the means of the house collection company and the government to force the building, and the wave of building collection extended from her neighbors to the unit where she lived. His father was so miserable that the lower classes could not afford to go upstairs, so Zheng made up his mind to buy the old tenement house, which was far away from Victoria No. 1 on the other side, as compensation for the family.
This wish has never been realized. After her mother's death, her compensatory psychology slowly combined with her unfulfilled thirst, resulting in the fruit of violence.
The heroine, Ah Yan, may represent the views of some Hong Kong women, who have only two goals in their lives: a man or a house.
Women are boats and always want to find reliable docks to anchor. If it is obtained through his own ability, then the man becomes cocoa, in the words of Zuo Xiao Curse: what is forgotten and unforgettable is the chicken. The role of Eason Chan's role lies in this.
That wasn't a reliable man, so when the heroine finally bought the house, she broke up with him very gracefully. But behind this dash is a kind of sadness.
The film makes a positive name and makes accusations against the society through bloody violence, including zheng lichang's childhood, when she experienced real estate developers forcibly relocating and taking over the building by illegal means, but the government turned a blind eye, while zheng lichang experienced difficulties in buying a house when she grew up. There is a classic dialogue in the line of the movie: "Real estate developers play with the horn!" "It still applies today.
Although in the movie, the heroine successfully lowered the property price through her own methods, the movie "Yoshiya", which was released in 2018, tells the story of the real estate agent who can still successfully sell the murderous house by buying low and selling high. This explains that there is still a certain market in the city of murder.
In real life, the price of the murderous house does not necessarily fall. Especially for working-class people.
The first person Ah Yan killed was not someone else, but actually her own father.
One night, she watched her coughing father at home about to suffocate, and she should have immediately activated the breathing aid device to save her father, but thinking of the insurance money after his death, she watched his father die slowly. Just when she took 2 million insurance money to buy a house, she did not expect the stock market to be prosperous, and the owner pressed the house price to find a better price.
Therefore, she thought of creating murders to drive down property prices.
The film ends with a satire on Ah Yan's murder plan, with a voiceover that Lehman is bankrupt. The story ends there. But we all know that the Lehman bankruptcy caused the financial tsunami in 2008, and Hong Kong's stock market and property market were not spared.
In 2007, Hong Kong house prices soared, but in fact, it has reached the top of the financial crisis so that Hong Kong house prices plummeted overnight, if Ah Yan is willing to listen to her boyfriend's words, do not "touch the top into the market", you can simply buy a cheap house. And what about the hard work of buying a house, the result is that the room has a wardrobe and can't put down the bed, isn't it ironic.
When Ah Yan finally moved into the nest of dreams, Ah Yan's blank eyes were quite playful, the house bought with blood on her hands was not as big as she thought, the sea that looked out began to become blurred, and the background began to satirize Ah Yan with a secondary mortgage storm to move into this house without the happiness she had originally thought, and the heavens were indeed so teasing people.