The crystal curtain moves with a breeze——Analysis of the artistic characteristics and spiritual connotation of the psychological horror film "Rose, Red Lotus"

Lizzie 2022-01-04 08:01:17


Movie: "Rose, Red Lotus" (also known as "A tale of two sisters")

Filming date: September 2002-March 2003

Release date: June 13, 2003 (Korea)

Filming format: 35mm Length: 115Min

Movie Genre: Thriller/Horror/Suspense/Plot/Ethics

Director: Jin Jiyun

Starring: Lin Xiujing ( playing sister Xiuwei), Yeom Jingya (playing stepmother), Jin Jiazhu (playing father), Wen Geunying (playing younger sister) Xiulian)

Film Achievement: The Korean horror film "Rose, Red Lotus" released in 2003 broke the Korean box office record for its premiere day in a short time, and set a Korean horror movie box office record in just three weeks. The film's attitude jumped to the seventh place in the South Korean box office, which was in the limelight that year. At that time, the three leading female actors of the film, Lim Soo-jeong, Moon Geun-young, and Yeom Jung-a were all well-known for a while, especially in the role of her sister, Lin Soo-jeong, who won the best new actor awards at major local film festivals in Korea, and won two trophies abroad. . In the film, Wen Geunying, who plays the younger sister, is the same as Lin Xiujing as the heroine of the film for the first time, and her acting skills are also highly recognized. With this film and Lin Xiujing, she was nominated for the Best New Actor in the Blue Dragon Award. In the same year, she appeared in the hit comedy film "My Little Bride" and became the "national sister" of South Korea. The superb performances of the stepmother and father actor Yeom Jung Ah and Kim Kap Soo have received unanimous praise from the industry. In 2007, it was rated as the best horror film in the new era (after 1980) in South Korea by the industry, and was also selected as one of the world's top 50 horror films. Since then, "My Savage Girlfriend" has become the second Korean film to be adapted by Hollywood, and it was reproduced as "Uninvited".


The crystal curtain moves with a breeze

——Analysis of the artistic characteristics and spiritual connotation of the psychological horror film "Rose, Red Lotus"



[Abstract] "Rose, Red Lotus" is a classic of Korean psychological horror movies. The whole film uses a tepid rhythm to show the inner world of the heroine who feels guilty after experiencing a family change and is unable to adapt herself to the mental breakdown. The narrative is based on the artistic technique of fiction and reality, and the performance method of splitting a character into two characters is adopted. Under the seemingly real superficial story, there is a more memorable and painful family ethical tragedy, which is thought-provoking.

[Keywords] psychologicalism; horror movies;



there is a deep courtyard between the beautiful landscapes of family ethics . That is the home of sisters Xiuwei and Xiulian. However, the indifferent father and tricky stepmother in the family left the sisters with trauma and torture. The stepmother always made things difficult for the sisters and used her weak sister Xiulian to exhale. Sister Xiuwei found out that her stepmother shut Xiulian in the closet and abused her, wishing to come and save her early. However, his father told Xiuwei that her sister was no longer alive... Then whose imagination is all these stories? Or is it a projection of her painful psychology? Behind every woven dream, there is a memory and sorrow that cannot be erased in the dreamer's heart. When the dream wakes up, there are always feelings and tears of the dreamer. Hidden behind the tears and the lost back, it is Xiuwei who quarreled with her stepmother and missed saving her sister Xiulian, who was pressed under the closet. She felt guilty and regretful. Can Xiuwei, who sits alone at the ferry, see the true taste of life, family and emotions?

Regarding this excellent South Korean family ethics horror film of psychoanalyticism, there has long been a good idea of ​​jewels and jade, and I allowed me to use naive pens and a few words to show my love.

1. The unique narrative style of time and space disorder The

film adopts a double-line structure of light, dark and solid as a whole, focusing on the heroine sister Xiuwei's inner world that is distorted by excessive grief under the psychological burden of her sister's tragic death and cannot be rescued. Since the film has psychologically processed the real events, and the real plots of the key transitions are taken by the father's phone, it is easy for the audience to imagine it because of the obsession with being deliberately expressed by the director Xiuwei. It is difficult to understand because of its appearance.

In the first half of the film, the director has been setting up suspense. At the beginning of the film, the director has already confessed that the protagonist Xiuwei is a mentally ill, but the doctor’s questioning of “what happened that day” can easily lead the audience to regard Xiuwei’s memories as an objective reality. . In fact, the director restructured the entire story during the film’s occurrence. The progression of Xiuwei’s illness also coincided with the director’s narrative process of completing the film story. The whole movie was in the psychology of the mentally ill Xiuwei It is done openly under the leadership. The seemingly random and undisciplined but meticulous thinking, it is precisely because of its undisciplined, in line with the characteristics of the sudden whim of the mentally ill, that the whole film appears to be well-conceived and meaningful.

At the beginning of the topic, the director set his sister’s palmistry, and there seemed to be some doubts. Why did the same clothes appear in the closet of the sister’s room? The first time my dad called, he didn’t tell who to call and who the content of the call refers to. What these three suspense. Then began to intersperse the horror plot in the suspense. First, my sister heard a strange sound while sleeping, and ran to her sister's room to tell her. Second, my sister went downstairs to see what happened, but met her stepmother. My sister opened the refrigerator and found a pack of rotten flesh, while the stepmother was watching a TV without signal in the living room. Third, the sister encountered a nightmare and dreamed of her mother's ghost in her dream. She saw the female ghost climb on the bed and bleed from her body. The film then began to make waves. My sister found the numerous scars on her hands, and she was certain that her sister had been abused by her stepmother. My sister was disgusted when she saw the stepmother appearing in old family photos. My sister and stepmother were at the dinner table. Qian had a fierce debate and overthrew the cups and plates on the table to the ground; Dad came to comfort his sister, but was treated coldly by her sister. These conflicts brought the complicated relationship between my sister and her family to a climax. However, immediately after the important family dinner scene in the film, the two sisters did not appear. The uncle (the stepmother's younger brother) and aunt whom my father invited seemed uncomfortable seeing the stepmother. Four people are not speculative when eating. The stepmother talked about uncle's teenage fun, but the uncle was uninterested. Being embarrassed, my aunt had a seizure and broke up. On the way back, the aunt told her uncle that she saw a ghost under the sink, and the stepmother also saw the spiritual girl in green. At this time, it had been screened for one hour, and the horror scene appeared for the second time. The story goes back to the stepmother and two sisters. Stepmother Ye found her beloved bird dead in the cage. Suspecting that it was her sister Xiulian killed it, she rushed into Xiulian's room and locked Xiulian in the closet. And asked Xiulian to plead guilty. Sister Xiuwei, who was awakened by the cry, rushed over and opened the closet to see that her sister was already crying. Xiuwei took Xiulian back to her room, stroking Xiulian's head while crying, comforting her. Dad heard the sound and came to see Xiuwei and quarreled with Xiuwei. Xiuwei revealed the truth about her hatred of her stepmother for abusing her younger sister, and her father told Xiuwei the fact that her sister Xiulian had already passed away. After the clouds and the moon, the story seems to become clear. The younger sister is an illusion of her sister's illness. At this time, the film was shown for 78 minutes, nearly two-thirds.

However, the movie did not fully reveal the truth about Lushan. The third time my father called, it seemed that he was going to invite someone, and he was directly related to Xiuwei's condition. At this time, the narrative of the shots began to be chaotic, and the several paragraphs seemed to have no logical relationship but seemed to be closely linked with related shots. The first group was Xiuwei, but she still heard Xiulian calling her, and then Xiuwei went to the living room and saw a bloody path that looked like blood. Following the bloody path, she found a large package of her sister who was dismembered. remains. In the second group, my sister saw the big package in the closet and wanted to open it, but the stepmother came in with hot water to fight with her sister. In the end, both were injured and her sister fell to the ground and fainted. The third group is the stepmother dragging her sister to the living room floor. In the fourth group, the stepmother dragged a plaster figure to her sister, and after talking with her sister, she said that she wanted to free her sister. He picked up the plaster and wanted to hit his sister. At this moment, the stepmother turned her head nervously, the camera switched to her father coming in and saw Xiuwei lying on the ground, the plaster shattered all over the floor.

The tension disappeared suddenly, and the film returned to reality. Father took Xiuwei to the sofa and went to check everything at home. When she turned around to take medicine for Xiuwei, she became a stepmother on the sofa. At this time the door opened, and a man in a dark uniform came in. Through the change of the ring shot and the camera, the identity of the stepmother in white and the person in the dark uniform was changed. The stepmother is wearing a dark uniform. The film has entered a big reveal. In the end, the director restored the original appearance of the whole story with the help of four big reveals. Before the final reveal of the fourth paragraph, the director also designed a scene where the stepmother sees the ghost in the wardrobe because of her inner anxiety. It wasn't until all the secrets that the director wanted to state were revealed one by one, that the audience vaguely felt the pain in her sister's heart at the end of the film.

The whole film breaks the traditional time and space narrative, precisely because the main purpose and intention of the film are to express a mentally ill psychological world. And the uniqueness of this narrative method is closely related to the artistic technique of filming reality and fiction. At the beginning of the film, her sister is receiving psychological consultation from a doctor in the hospital, and she is silent. At the end of the film, the scene where my sister sits alone at the ferry and looks into the distance on the first day of her sister's recuperation home, the same is silent. But one is in the cold ward, and the other is beside the distant clear water, which makes people feel the time emptiness of Indian philosophy. From the perspective of the vulgar time concept, this film is still an ordinary narrative film with flashbacks and followed by narratives. However, in terms of the film's theme and evolution, most of it replaces objective time and space with psychological time and space. Many important scenes and dialogues may just be Xiuwei's stream of consciousness and conjecture.

2. The role setting method of expressing one character through multiple roles.

If talking about the performance of an actor, the acting skills of the four leading actors are the most important factor for the success of the film outside the plot. Both Kim Kap Soo and Yeom Jung Ah are well-known film actors. Although the two sisters' actor Lin Soo Jung and Moon Geun Young are the first protagonists of a movie, they both have rich acting experience, deep emotional drama and precise expressions.

Especially the role setting of the three female protagonists in the film is very interesting in itself. The elder sister is a real being, the stepmother is an imaginary enemy, and the younger sister is the imaginary object of the elder sister to relieve the grief. The confrontation between the sister and the stepmother is a highlight of the film performance. Since the stepmother is an imaginary existence after the split personality of the sister, the director carefully arranged the clothes and makeup when dealing with the character of the stepmother. There are many careful audiences can find that the dress of the sister has changed to the stepmother, which in fact already hints at the story. True love. In addition, the hairstyle, bangs design, and nose makeup are as similar to her sister's makeup as possible. The stepmother Lian Jingya is taller than her sister's actor Lin Xiujing, but her appearance is quite similar, which also creates a real and magical effect.

There are many times in the film taking medicine, and every time the medicine is taken, it is the stepmother. On the contrary, the elder sister appeared after the elder sister's body was externalized, and the stepmother was a disguised form of the elder sister's body. My sister hated her stepmother's cruelty deep in her heart, and she also hated that she didn't rescue her sister back then. Therefore, she imagined herself as a stepmother, and imagined that there was another sister. However, the person taking the medicine should be the stepmother, not her. The director's intention is not subtle.

And the scenes where the sister and the younger sister appear together are the same reality. The younger sister's clothes are mostly fresh skirts or pure white clothes, which not only hints at the fact that the younger sister is dead, but also shows the characteristics of the younger sister's image. When the father and the sisters were talking (actually speaking with Xiuwei), the picture of the younger sister was cut off, but after the father turned around, the younger sister appeared again as a bystander.

This method of expressing the psychological world of a character with multiple characters is a unique technique of psychological expressionism and analyticism, and it has a good effect on explaining the psychological changes and pathological causes of characters, especially the protagonist who is mentally abnormal.

3. The color and light of

the film are closely integrated with the psychological changes of the characters. The film’s high level of recognition in its artistic level has to be attributed to the ingenious cooperation of its lighting and choreographer.

Overall, the film deeply reflects the traditional Korean aesthetic thinking with its dual artistic style of silence and freshness. Of course, the little doll in the sister's room, the wall clock in the sister's room, and the appearance of the entire villa all have the texture of Central Europe, but they are very sophisticated in combination with local Korean art.

The overall use of natural light, although most of the lenses are shot indoors, but the mountain villa windows are large and large, the lighting effect is good, in order to create a sense of reality, and to match the feeling of coolness, there is no excessive non-natural light intervention.

After the two sisters went home for the first dinner, the younger sister went up the stairs and took pictures of her calf. Using ambient light, she met her sister at the corner of the stairs. The camera moved up to her smiling face, and the light from the wall lamp brought out the light and joy of her sister. , The camera turned to my sister's face again, still no top light, no reflector, making my sister's face a little darker, but even more embarrassed. After walking upstairs, the older sister walked on her right side, and the younger sister leaned against the light of the wall lamp, and her complexion was more rosy and softer. The use of light in this detail can see the expected image of the sister's psychological imagination of the sister, and the sister exists as the object of protection of the sister.

Immediately after the stepmother teasing the bird, the stepmother's face was illuminated from bottom to top, showing its hateful and boring appearance (note that the stepmother is the sister herself, and it is also her own imagination of the stepmother). The elder sister imagined that she was a stepmother doing makeup, and she used side light to set off the quiet and deep atmosphere, as if she was portraying the turbulence in her heart.

Late at night, my sister ran to her sister’s room and told her that she heard a strange sound. My sister went downstairs to find out. When she went down the stairs, the small white lamp on the ceiling formed the top light, which made her face more gloomy and also put her expression in it. The sense of temptation is more appropriate.

The next day my sister had a nightmare before waking up. At this time, the room had a cold color; after the nightmare, the room had a warm color. There is indeed a difference between warm and cold in expressing mood. When my sister retrieved a box of mother's old things from the old warehouse, she also used warm colors, which was consistent with the nostalgic mood. The scene of the sister and stepmother confronting each other at the dinner table, using the evening sun through the kitchen window and the mountain scenery outside the window to contrast the fierce psychological warfare with the tranquil scenery. Giving the stepmother's right face a sidelight adds a bit more to the stepmother's shameless image.

When my father and my sister had a dispute, they slapped my sister's face in the dark background, contrasting with the sister's desperate and indifferent lines, and it was difficult to conceal the sadness and self-confidence in his heart.

In addition, there are many examples that are inconvenient to discuss one by one. The light feature of this film is that it does not use special light for shooting. The light-emitting objects appearing in the film naturally constitute light from various angles to express the psychological changes of the characters. The colors used are mainly cool colors, and warm colors are used in a few shots to make beautiful scenes more memorable, and make people think about the ethics of family happiness.

Fourth, the use of lens techniques and shooting methods to increase the tension

. The connection and use of the lens have demonstrated the senior skills of directors and photography.

Let's talk about the connection of shots first. In the film, many shots are switched to a certain degree, but they are totally unaware of the coordination and logical relationship of music. For example, a group of shots switching when a sister invites her sister to a ferry. First, the sisters are holding hands and running, and then as the music becomes weaker, it switches to a scene of blue sky and clouds. At the transition of this phrase, the camera switches to the four of the sisters stepping on the water. Legs, at the end of this phrase, take a back shot from about ten meters behind the sisters, and wait for the next phrase to shoot the scene where the sister is lying down. Although the switching of the whole scene has a certain jumpiness, it uses music to promote the natural transition and creates a fresh style. The multi-angle switching is similar to a montage, but also has the effect of ring shooting. This beautiful scene is emphasized, and the end of the film When the truth was revealed, the loneliness of my sister sitting on the ferry alone was in contrast, showing the tragic appeal.

The director also uses the rhythm of the camera and lens shifting to portray the protagonist's inner fluctuations and subtle complex psychology.

The first ghost scene is the scene in which Xiuwei dreams of a female ghost with long hair getting up in the room. She deliberately uses the upward shot to highlight the height of the female ghost and set off an atmosphere of horror.

In the scene where Xiuwei ran to the living room to look for her sister, she used a fast-zooming lens to speed up to pull Xiuwei, and then the middle lens began to circle back and forth again, turning around twice. When the elder sister heard her voice, she followed her back and patted. These shots first express the imminent sense of urgency, and then show the heroine's inner anxiety and concern for her sister in suspense.

5. The film’s musical features and sound effects

The music team of "Rose and Red Lotus" is very good. Although it is a horror film, there is no room for bright music, but a violin and piano concerto full of melancholic blue is enough. impressive. The melody of the fast three beats matches the beautiful mountains and beautiful waters of the Korean peninsula and the two sisters in the sun. It appears fresh, smooth and vivid, but there is still a hint of sadness in the remaining sound. The film repeats this theme melody, and uses different timbres to achieve different sound and emotional effects, so as to render the feeling of the plot.

In the first few minutes of the film’s questioning by the doctors in the hospital, all natural voices were used to highlight the silence of the hospital. Except for the doctor’s words, only the sound of water when the doctor was cleaning his hands and the sound of Xiuwei’s footsteps when she was being helped in. Through the doctor's steady and unfeeling questioning, the film sets the sad tone and also creates a suspenseful effect. Xiuwei tilted her head out of the window, memories entered, and the theme song slowly entered, which fits well with the smooth movement of the car in the picture. The car stopped at the door of the cabin, and the music just ended, as if it was playing environmental music inside the car, which felt very natural. When the sisters appeared on the stage, two more lines of theme music appeared. The elder sister called her sister to go to the ferry to play, and when the younger sister reached out and ran over to hold her sister's hand, the theme song began to sound from the chorus. The picture switched to the lake, and the voice gradually softened and became brighter, blending with the blue sky and clear water. When my sister lay down, the music gradually stopped. The camera focused on the younger sister’s calf stepping on the water, and slowly pulled closer, only to hear the sound of the water waves, the younger sister’s moving calf and the quiet voice formed a dynamic contrast, which made the picture feel mysterious and slightly nervous. Atmosphere. When my sister looks at her sister's palmistry, the soundtrack only uses three single notes to change from a major third to a pure second, which creates a weird feeling.

The music used in the horror scenes in the film is basically the same as that of ordinary horror movies, but it is more restrained than European and American. It is mainly based on psychological horror effects without excessive exaggeration. Among the many horror and bewildering psychological music expressions, Xiuwei learned from her father that her sister had passed away a long time ago and went to find her sister the next day. When she arrived in the living room, she used the endlessly moving music which was quite praised. This is a moment when the fragrance is floating and the mist is heavy. The combination of endlessly moving music and the tension of the fast camera fully expresses the helplessness and confusion of my sister's heart.

In the final big reveal, after sister Xiulian was overwhelmed by the closet and made a loud noise, the sound of the wall clock in her sister's room was used to bring out the feeling of time passing at that time, in order to express the feelings of regret in her heart. The theme song at the end of the film sounded melodiously, echoing the opening of the film, with a higher voice, pushing the emotion of the whole movie to the extreme, making the viewers still sigh infinitely after watching the movie.

6. The profound philosophical thoughts hidden behind the chaos of chaos, the

film completes the restoration of the entire story through four major reveals at the end, and this article also briefly explains the antecedents of the story at the end. A few years ago, my father brought his stepmother to the house. The sick mother was depressed and killed herself in the closet. The younger sister woke up to find her deceased mother. She wanted to pull out her mother's body in a hurry, but was overwhelmed by the wardrobe. The father, stepmother, sister, and stepmother's younger brother and younger siblings who had finished dinner at home all heard a loud noise. Only the stepmother went to the room to look around, but did not reach out to help. When she came back to the stairs, she met Xiuwei. The two of them quarreled, and Xiuwei finally walked out of the house in anger. My sister passed away in tears.

The father played an indifferent role in this family tragedy. Even after Xiuwei became ill, she still existed as a "loving father" silently caring about Xiuwei's condition. But Xiuwei clearly said when arguing with him: "Why do I have to understand? You brought all the dirty things here." The Bible says, "People must leave their parents and join their wives." "If you divorce your wife, you will be called an adulteress if it is not for fornication." Father’s fornication is indeed the initiator of family disputes. His love for Xiuwei is only from the surface, and he can't feel it deeper. Because the numbness of the soul can no longer savor the three points. And he also transferred the repentance of the old days to his indifference to his stepmother. It is not that he does not want to make up for the debt to his daughter, but it is difficult to sew the torn family relationship. Because once the most precious emotion in the world is broken, even if there is only a little breach, it cannot be as good as before, because it was once so pure and perfect.

"The most painful thing in life is that I want to erase a memory, but I can't. It is lingering, like a shadow." This is what the stepmother in the illusion of the sister in the play said to her sister. Because it has happened and existed, it cannot be denied anymore. This is why you feel ashamed after making a mistake. A person who is forgetful of his criminal history must be someone who has no sense of shame. And blindly falling into a sense of guilt may cause more uneasy vibrations in life.

The sister finally missed the opportunity to rescue her sister because of her hostility towards her stepmother. There are indeed many moments in life. We are blinded by momentary anger and forget to accomplish more important things that require us to do more. This anger is also the pride of this life and the lust of the flesh. It is the Ecstasy that Satan has set for us. When anger comes, all we need to do is to look up to the sky, meditate on the grace of the benefactor, and there is always a wonderful thing about the ancient ways of turning wars of war into jade silk.

The sun of the new day followed the curtain blown by the wind into Xiuwei's room, and the rose flowers in the courtyard of the villa became a little redder. It's really like "the crystal curtain is blowing in the breeze, and the roses are full of fragrance." It's just that this beautiful day in the world is beautiful, everyone has their own fun.

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Extended Reading
  • Mabelle 2022-04-23 07:02:47

    All kinds of unreasonable ah, your wardrobe fell down, can't you hear? Can't you scream twice when you're overwhelmed by the big wardrobe? All kinds of tricks and mysteries hurt my feelings.

  • Modesto 2022-03-21 09:02:19

    I've always thought it was the best horror movie ever made. Wen Geunying and Lin Xiujing's acting skills are amazing, and the hysteria of stepmother Lian Jingya also makes people feel a little nervous. The rich and luxurious colors and the melancholy violin are the most impressive~ YouTube has a MV that uses Heather Nova's Island as the background music. The essence of the movie is a condensed version. The lyrics are so emotional, it made me cry!

A Tale of Two Sisters quotes

  • Moo-hyeon Bae: Soo-mi, I know you're very angry with me. And I know I'm a bad father.

    Bae Soo-mi: You're not even a bad father.

    Moo-hyeon Bae: It's cold so let's go inside.

    Bae Soo-mi: I will.

  • Bae Soo-yeon: Did you go to my room?

    Bae Soo-mi: [nods] Hmm.

    Bae Soo-yeon: Who was it?

    Bae Soo-mi: That woman.

    Bae Soo-yeon: Stepmom?

    Bae Soo-mi: [nods] Hmm. It's strange.

    Bae Soo-yeon: What is?

    Bae Soo-mi: That woman is strange. And so is this house.