On a cold afternoon in early autumn, I sat on a bench in the school woods reading a book, and the memories of the title and content of the book had dissipated like an early morning mist. My girlfriend was leaning over my shoulder watching a movie, and I was sharing a box of cookies with her. The woods were quiet, and it gave people a more and more cold and miserable feeling. The canopy of the luan trees on both sides has changed from goose yellow to bright red, and Vulture enjoys the joy of life, but we are sunk in this cold and miserable.
There was a long silence, quiet as if sitting at the bottom of a dark lake with earplugs.
"Is this book interesting?" She asked suddenly.
"It's not interesting." I rubbed my sore eyes, "Reading in the sun is not a good idea. ”
I'm not a person with a good memory, in fact I have forgotten too many things that should be remembered, but it is strange that these trivial conversations are remembered clearly.
"Finished watching the movie? What do you think? I asked.
"It's a good movie, but I don't like it."
"How come?" I asked, but my heart was calculating the landing of the dinner, "What about the name of the movie?" ”
"The Vanishing Lover" after which she stopped speaking, staring fixedly at a certain point in the distance.
I silently followed her gaze, but there was nothing, the distant poplar forest casting a long shadow in the setting sun, and a few gray magpies flying from the top of the trees and sinking into the shadows like fish in the water.
She suddenly turned her head, "If one day we stop loving each other, what will we do to each other?" ”
The sun shining through the edges of the leaves spread a faint tulle over her knees and shoulders, and she looked at me for a long time, the beige sweater and the fluff on her face glistening with fluorescence.
Two years after separating from her, I watched the movie...
On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Ben Affleck's Nick arrives at his sister's tavern and complains about his wife Amy, who once loved each other, and the marriage that is completely hopeless, and his handsome appearance makes it difficult to hide his decadent and snubbed temperament. "Another clichéd movie about the crisis of a middle-aged marriage," I thought.
Amy's parents are famous writers, writing books and publishing books at every stage of her life, and the things she can't do and can't complete, the "magical Amy" in the book can complete them for her one by one. Although not "magical", Amy's life is also a smooth sailing: Harvard Bachelor of Arts, Yale psychology lecturer, has his own creations, plus he is the protagonist of a well-known work, Amy has many suitors and fans since childhood.
Amy and Nick met at a party, the humorous and funny Nick and Amy had a good conversation, and two years after falling in love, they entered the palace of marriage. After marriage, Amy always deliberately creates some romance, including the treasure hunt on the wedding anniversary every year. The bland, worldly marriage was not the life she wanted, but as the passionate romance faded, the contradictions of the ordinary life began to stand out. In this way, their marriage reached its fifth year.
When Nick returns home from the bar, he is greeted by a messy house and his wife is gone. Nick called the police, and during routine questioning, Amy's parents mentioned two suspects, a rich classmate who was rejected in high school and constantly pestered Amy, and a college boyfriend who had been sued for sexual violence against Amy.
Agents search Nick and Amy's home and find a letter with "Clue One" written on it, Nick explains that this is his wife's favorite scavenger hunt, he also followed the clues in the letter to the police to his university office, where he did find the envelope marked "Clue Two", but the police also found a pair of women's panties, apparently not Nick's wife. Feeling a little unlucky, Nick pretended not to know although he had read through the information of Clue Two.
In the evening, Nick arrives alone in the cottage where his father used to live, which is the "brown hut" in the clue, and when Nick finds the third envelope, the alarm suddenly goes off, once again attracting the police. Nick still chose to hide it and hid the third letter in time. But Nick was also unable to penetrate the contents of the third letter, and the clues were interrupted.
The plot becomes more and more compact and bizarre, as the investigation progresses, the police find a tiny blood stain in the kitchen, and after testing the kitchen blood stains, it is found that there was a large number of blood stains on the kitchen floor, and the blood type matches Amy, which also means that the nature of the case will change from a missing case to a murder. Due to Amy's special status, the disappearance was widely reported, and at a blessing event for Amy, a pregnant woman neighbor came forward and said that she was Amy's close friend, saying that Amy was six weeks pregnant, and that the relationship between Nick and his wife was quite bad.
Enraged, Nick fled. Nick then explains to the agent that he doesn't know the woman at all and that Amy isn't pregnant. But agents show him a large number of intimate photos of Amy with her neighbors, and Nick is dumbfounded, but then all kinds of evidence against Nick strikes like an avalanche: Nick has overdrawn his credit card to buy luxury goods; Amy's life insurance has increased significantly, and it is Nick's signature; Amy is indeed pregnant, and the hospital has her pregnancy report. Piles of accusations point to Nick's murder of his wife, and under the negative media publicity and speculation, Nick has become a thousand fingers, and he feels that he has fallen into a net, which is tightly woven and has become tighter and tighter. Then Nick found a luxury item in his sister's warehouse that he had never seen in his credit card purchase records. Among these objects, he finds a puppet of Mr. Pantour, who in the story kills his wife and is about to bear the guilt himself.
At this time, the film turns to another story line, as the enthusiasm after marriage declines, the contradictions are prominent, Amy gradually feels that she is becoming a "tool of sexual dissipation, like a rag that can be thrown away at any time", she does not allow her marriage to become like other failed marriages, and her husband's mediocrity and infidelity break her last fantasy of a happy marriage. And she also began her own long layout:
Concealing her husband from finding a pregnant woman to be his girlfriend and collecting her urine to falsify pregnancy reports;
Have your husband sign his own life insurance policy inadvertently;
Purchase of large quantities of luxury goods in the name of the husband;
Draw out a large amount of blood to fake the crime scene, and then wipe it all off to leave only a trace;
Finally, and most frighteningly, it takes a long time to forge a diary to record the love story with Nick: from the fairytale first encounter, to Nick spending days and nights trying not to make progress, and then abusing and abusing himself, he lives in fear of Nick all the time, and fears that Nick will kill himself. Finally burn it, burn it just right, neither affect the reading, nor be too deliberate. Finally, he hid in the brown hut and changed the alarm code of the brown hut to ensure that the police could find it.
She then leaves the house, dyes her hair and harms herself, hides her name, and sends anonymous letters online to testify against Nick, and everything is proceeding steadily according to her plan, and it is no accident that Nick will be charged with murder. However, Amy was robbed for accidentally revealing her property, and in desperation, she called the rich man who had been pursuing her, falsely claiming that she had been abused and threatened by Nick and escaped, claiming that the rich man had always been her spiritual pillar, and the rich man gladly agreed to protect Amy and take her back to his home.
Nick finds a lawyer who specializes in such cases, and the lawyer advises him to confess everything in the TV show before the incidents such as cheating and cheating are exposed, and he will be hated and insulted, but with trust and sympathy. The leak in the house happened to rain overnight, and just as Nick was preparing to take the stage, Nick's lover took the first step to the media to reveal his relationship with Nick. The lawyer said that the situation had changed and asked Nick to terminate the interview, but Nick insisted on continuing, and in the interview Nick admitted his mistake frankly, saying that "he was not a good person, but he did not kill his wife, and hoped that his wife would come back." "This is not so much addressed to the public as it is to Amy. The broadcast of the program reversed its own disadvantage and won the sympathy of the public. What's more, Amy also saw the scene on TV.
Amy has been cooperating with her parents to play the "amazing Amy" to the outside world since she was a child, she has long been accustomed to the real and false life, and the role play has become one with her like breathing. After falling in love with Nick at first sight, she is willing to play the perfect lover in Nick's heart. But when their feelings gradually derail, amy's carefully clothed skin for herself also decays and falls off along with the deteriorated marriage, and she also reveals her true face, a neurotic control freak. Amy's twisted personality has a lot to do with the environment in which she grew up, and everyone, including her parents, focuses on that "amazing Amy." Compared to the magical Amy in the book, Nick loves her real self more, which is why she is willing to play another self for Nick, in a sense, Nick did kill his wife, his decadence and infidelity killed the character that Amy had carefully created, and also released the terrifying beast hidden underneath.
Nick on TV is sincere and affectionate, he is tearfully performing hard, the two are separated from the screen but they both know it, all this seems so funny. However, Amy buys it, and she is willing to put on the disguise again to play Nick's lover, even if she knows that Nick is just trying to trick her into going back, and she is willing to continue this game of pretending to be with Nick. Nick is because of desperate compromises, and Amy is because of crazy and twisted love.
Amy then repeats her tactics, falsifying evidence of being kidnapped and abused by a rich man and killing the other person in bed. Return to her husband with a trail of blood. The dead rich man bears all the charges, although there are many loopholes in the case, but people will only believe what they are willing to believe, and the miraculous return of "Magical Amy" is obviously more popular. So under the key evidence, Amy's perfect character image, and one-sided media and public opinion, the police also chose to close the case hastily.
In the shower, the two naked men stood facing each other, and after making sure Nick couldn't record, Amy calmly confessed what she had done, all of which flowed into the sewers like blood on her body, and no one knew about it. And Nick needs to continue to play the perfect husband on TV, and he will fall into disrepute once he tries to leave Amy. He had been held captive by Amy's intrigue and could no longer leave her. Life is back to the calm it was before the story begins, but the love that was once there was gone, and all that was left was endless pain, jealousy, and torture.
"What are you thinking?"
"How do you feel?"
"What have we done to each other?"