In the sperm collection room of the hospital, facing the wall full of pornographic posters, Alfred suddenly got inspiration. He brewed a script called Torremolinos 73 (a seaside town in Spain), which tells the story of a middle-aged rich widow who is reborn Travel, recall an emotion when you were young. He really got the investment of his boss, and through this film, he will change his fate: he will become a serious director, and his wife will become a real actor. Alfred, who shot the film in black and white, parodies Bergman heavily, and is filled with serious questions of life and death from beginning to end. However, fate likes to joke: In the end, the husband has to compromise with the double pressure of his wife and boss: add a passionate scene of widow and death having sex. Of course, the boss is for the box office, and the wife urgently needs to get a child through other means because of her husband's death. The additional passionate scenes made Torremolinos 73 completely degenerate from literature and art to x, and the poetic and lyrical title of the film was also changed to "The Adventures of the Merry Widow" when it was released. Alfred stopped making movies and has since filmed wedding videos for newlyweds. At the end, the family of three looked happy.
A very natural and helpless comedy, without the slightest sentimentality or pretence-hiding the director's rather ambiguous views, so he simply didn't express it, and just let the story show: the protagonist is just a nameless salesman, and this profession seems to be one of the capitalist society. A typical representative of alienation, and making pornographic videos has the smell of vulgar money worship, but when he wants to make a Bergman-esque movie? On the one hand, this kind of parody makes the hero's final breakthrough tragic and comical; Torremolinos 73 mocked Bergman in a tribute to him, not a matter of dung, but a cultural schism. But the director is gentle, he doesn't need this split to turn into confrontation, he expresses tenderness in the split: the powerlessness of life is forgiven. At least the love between husband and wife cannot be reduced to the illusion of "the crowd of black people", and the instinct to warm is also sublimated here into a kind of motivation for mutual support and even self-improvement.
The ambiguous attitude is not a disadvantage, but from a technical point of view, the supporting role is too stereotyped. The boss and the large group of colleagues only have the function of props, and they do not have the organic power of contrast, depression or combat with the protagonist couple. The relationship between the tired characters is like fat, which generally makes people angry, it is better to cut things off. But this fat seems to be the unfolding of life: helpless, ambiguous, and not pure enough. Through proper distillation, it may be possible to achieve a certain purity that art or life requires of us. However, "pure" is only the target of this film, not the goal of desire. The high profile of "consumption invades the body, how does the spirit break through" is not suitable for this film, just like the Chinese translation of this film: happy pornographic film. The husband and wife look for the happy life they want with a high degree of flexibility. Happiness is not a pleasure, let alone a rule, let alone talk of pureness, but to break the precepts with ease.
The director does want to seriously discuss an ethical issue, but he doesn't want clear boundaries and aggressive morality. He prefers to keep the mood in the film in a state of chaos, which is neither ignorance nor wisdom, but compassion and understanding. As an ordinary audience, being able to be so considerate, of course, also gives up the interest of ripping off the cocoon from it.
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