This article was first published in the DeepFocus column: "Make a movie about the love story of the new French president, it must be like this"
David will not miss any opportunity to hunt beauty, even if Conswella is his student. Perhaps it can be understood that he will not give up any moments of capturing beauty. The age difference of more than 30 years has surpassed the taboo of teacher-student love and become the gunpowder to wrap the uneasy emotions in the film. David writes his desire for youth and a beautiful body from his perspective. He always pursues a way to preserve beauty, from literature, painting, music, photography, and even the possession of Conswella, the strong mummy complex and worry about gain and loss. His sophistication kept him in an uneasy mood all the time.
There are many hand-held sequences in the film that are evident: David appreciates and takes possession of Conswella's beauty, his hesitation and disbelief as he talks to his friend George; What's more: When George took pictures of Conswella by the sea, he recalled that David woke George up at the cafe, and his feelings for Conswella were nothing but a fascination with a beautiful body. We can't hear what Conswella said to David in this flashback. We can only hear the sound of the waves and the chirping of seagulls - just like David, who is blind to the preservation of the beautiful body, but blindly confined to the outside world. Difficult to go deep.
Perhaps David's pain comes from the unequal relationship between him and Conswella, who considers himself to be just "the man who gave her some cultural literacy" in Conswella's life, with a strong teacher tone. It seems that the relationship between them is destined to be almost one-way transmission. David acquiesced to his sophisticated role. He is always expressing, talking, hesitating, struggling, and suffering. He is so afraid of aging and death that he needs to be slightly paralyzed in the process of pursuing beauty.
He appreciates Conswella's body with the eyes of examining a work of art, and he looks for beauty itself with the eyes of a teacher who has read countless literary and artistic works; he thinks that he is different from a middle-aged man who simply consumes sex. All he did was add more admiration to him.
David is self-reliant on beauty, and reading countless beautiful experiences is his fetter. It is difficult for him to step into life because he is so worried about gains and losses. . After Conswella left, he realized from another woman's point of view that he was possessing the opposite of beauty, which was actually beauty's control over him. He was completely dominated and became a believer of beauty.
Until Conswella no longer had a perfect appearance, and when George took pictures of her, she no longer showed her body confidently and indifferently, and suddenly removed the cover of her clothes. Maybe George will finally be able to distinguish between appreciating beauty alone and possessing it through sex, he has cast aside the vision of an overanalysing teacher, and she is no longer a beautiful young schoolgirl - George will no longer cite Shakespeare Where does Coxwella come from, she will no longer be dominated by her beauty, and there is finally a little equal relationship between them.
Yet, like the eternal gaze in the painting, she sees through David. She understands that he will always be a pursuit of beauty, and she no longer establishes a relationship based on beauty with David as a receiver, she chooses to leave David and seal her memories.
Perhaps the sublime and eternity of beauty lies in the disappearance of the object on which it rests, and beauty will last forever until the object is far away from us and cannot be possessed.
And like all people who appreciate beauty, we are always confined to the outside of beauty, staying on beautiful things, and there is still an endless distance from seeing beauty.
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