There is only a layer of veil between life and lies
"Perfect Stranger" is a small-budget comedy film directed by Italian director Paolo Genovese. Eighty percent of the plot of the entire film is completed at a dining table. The plot is compact and the contradictions are concentrated with explosive force. .
The movie is called Perfect Stranger, and it revolves around three couples at different stages of marriage and a bachelor. They are both good friends who have known each other for many years since childhood, but also a close relationship between husband and wife. They should be the most familiar with each other. people, but under a game, they revealed another side of them that was not known.
The reason why this movie is impressive is because it talks about a lot of things, about the mid-life marital crisis, about family conflicts, about homosexuality, about the relationship between the sexes, etc., all of which are closely related to our daily life.
01
The story begins on the night of a lunar eclipse, when Locke and Eva invite their long-time friends—the newlyweds Camossi and Bianca, the estranged Lehrer and Carlotta, and Perry, who falsely claimed that their "girlfriend" was absent. Pope had dinner and watched a lunar eclipse.
The couples at the dining table looked harmonious and loving, and everyone chatted with each other.
When it was mentioned that a mutual friend cheated, Eva suggested on a whim that everyone should play a game, put their mobile phones on the desktop, read out emails and text messages publicly, and turn on the speaker if they had a phone call.
The expressions of the people present were different. Some people showed great interest and fearlessness. Some people were guilty and hesitant. But in the end, under everyone's mutual questioning and agitation, everyone participated in this game.
Ultimately, however, the game devolves into a love falling apart and a friendship breaking apart.
02
The three couples in the film all have different marital problems. Eva did breast augmentation surgery without her husband Locke, and Locke went to see a psychiatrist without telling her husband; Carlotta chose to flirt with strange men on the Internet, and Lehrer quietly flirted with young women behind his wife's back; Anka cheated outside.
Some people say that there must be love in marriage, but love alone is not enough. The marriages of the three couples in the film are all based on love, but they gradually turn into lies and deceit.
Tearing the veil of lies is the pain and powerlessness of people's passion fading in middle age, and the love of the new and the old to seek stimulation to fill the emptiness. Either way, they eventually lead to a situation where the two are relatively silent or have endless quarrels.
Happy marriages are always alike, every unhappy marriage is unhappy in its own way. In the long years of marriage, the truth is always cruel and unbearable. Some people choose to tear the mask of disguise calmly and turn around, but more people choose to turn a blind eye and forbear.
People who choose the latter are often bound too much and want too much, not only wanting a perfect family that the world admires, but also wanting the so-called passion, constantly indulging in passion to escape the triviality and pressure from life, deliberately concealing it Maintain surface harmony, and in the end only a body remains.
So, how should we approach marriage? There is a quote in the film that is worth learning from: "Don't escalate an argument into a quarrel just because it's strong. I don't think the side that gives in is weak. In fact, it's wise to give in. I've seen all couples who can last a long time. Will try to take a small step back, but that's a giant step forward."
03
In the film, family relations are also a major conflict. The sexual conflict between Eva and her adolescent daughter is like the conflict that thousands of ordinary families may encounter.
Eva's strong opposition and disapproval of her daughter's early love, just like most parents who can't face up to their children's sexual maturity, cut off their feelings in the name of love, obstructed development, and completely forgot that she had experienced the same confusion and palpitation of youth. move.
Locke's sex education for her daughter is exemplary when she panics and seeks advice from her father in the face of her boyfriend's sexual demands.
Unlike the lies of the three previous couples, there was nothing wrong with Pep's deception.
He has been hiding the fact that he is gay from his friends, even at the expense of lying about making up a girlfriend who doesn't exist, not only because he doesn't know how to tell his friends that fact, but also because he is afraid of not being accepted.
He represents the social cognitive anxiety of the homosexual community. How many people have Zeng Yizheng kept expressing his respect and tolerance for homosexuality. However, when homosexuality really appeared around him, he immediately changed his attitude and changed his face quickly. , staggering.
People do not accept homosexuality, mostly because of the fear of the unknown, and the best way to break down the barriers and fears is to try to contact and understand.
In the film, Pep, as a homosexual, is also the person who understands the true meaning of love best.
Shi Tiesheng's "Broken Pen in Sickness" wrote: "Thus, although I am not a homosexual, I can understand homosexuality. Love, since it breaks through the body by means of the body, gender is not an absolute premise, since it is the meeting of the soul and the soul, then What matters is the other. The other is the otherness. The opposite sex is only one kind of otherness, and it is a more habitual one, one that is more restricted to the body, while the otherness of the soul is much broader, such as Strange thoughts and interests, especially heretics discriminated against and oppressed by tradition or habit, call for love to shine and cultivate virgin land.”
Alienness can also be said to be different from the self, the existence of aliens, its connotation is broad, and there are thousands of things that can be different. Just like in real life, we always love to label ourselves and divide circles to distinguish ourselves from others.
At the end of the movie, the director very subtly gave another ending. No one participated in the game. Everyone spent a night in peace, saying goodbye to each other and living as usual.
Social relationships are like a huge spider web, which is dense and fragile, and everyone is a link in a complex web. We know one end of the person we are connected to, but we don't know the other part behind him that is connected to it.
The fragility of social relations, like human nature, do not try to test it, but this does not mean that we have to live with deceit and lies, living under the pretense of happiness, but to let us understand that when we see life clearly. After the truth, still warmly embrace life.
Text/Nanzhi
Figure/Baidu
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