The first time I watched the movie "The Lover", I was not impressed. I just feel that this is just an exotic affair story. The male protagonist's emotions are not as strong as the men in "Lolita", and the girls' emotions are not as restless as the boys in "The Beautiful Legend of Sicily". The relationship between the two is only based on an unexpected encounter, which is not moving.
It wasn't until I found out that I had watched the castrated version that I found the full version and watched it again. After watching it, I was furious, because all the deleted scenes are precisely the cohesive point of the whole emotion of this movie. At that moment, I felt like a green-headed boy who had just had sex with an inflatable doll and was told that it was a collision of spirit and flesh; This is Wushan Yunyu.
China's video market, like the Chinese military, has no sexual symbols. When Wu Jing played eight times in Africa and showed his bronze chest muscles, the audience only felt tough and domineering, but when two Captain America slapped each other in the building and showed their butt curves, the audience called her husband directly. The essence of sexual charm is a true breath of human nature, which can make you feel the harmonious relationship between people, which is an inherent charm of human nature. And a person without sexual charm often has a cold image. It cannot make you feel sincere emotions. On the contrary, it casts an inaccessible iron door.
Most Chinese images are not sexually attractive, only castrated emotional impulses. The proof of love between men and women is not sexual attraction, but what they have paid for each other. Sex and love are one and the same, but sex has become taboo in this land, both in public and in movies. When sex becomes a taboo on the screen, the expression of love can only be reduced to a marginal ball. Most Chinese directors can't make sex, only sex. When sex is only sex in a movie, then all the behavior is just lust. This desire is not an animal desire, but a shameful pleasure in the exploration of taboos.
the night before
The protagonist, the French girl's only friend at the school, is also the only white woman at the girls' school, a white woman with no scruples. When other female students were wearing white pajamas in the dormitory, she walked in the dormitory naked, showing the unfettered freedom of sincere youth. She was lying naked on the girl's bed, naturally chatting with her about the prostitution of girls outside the school. When the girl heard it, she said to her friend, "It's always attractive to me. Go out with men you don't know. You don't even see them, you don't know, you'll never see their faces."
In the castrated version, the first scene of the girl's friend walking naked in the dormitory is deleted. The line was translated as: "You can accuse me of going out with some people you don't know, you won't see them at all, you won't see their faces."
The footage of the girl friend was cut, so that the unrestrained character of the girl friend was castrated. Viewers directly see a close-up of the girl's face chatting with her friend on the bed, leaving the audience with the impression that it's nothing more than a bedside chat between two little girls. And the changed line-"This is always attractive to me" is precisely the biggest reason why a girl chooses to start this relationship with a man, not for money, but a yearning for unknown sex.
first night
The house where the two meet is located in the hustle and bustle of Chinatown. The exterior and interior walls of the house are painted a rich blue. In the French tricolor, blue represents freedom. Outside the house are traditional Chinese signboards, stalls, streets, crowds and chanting. Inside the house are modern western-style beds, sofas and furnishings.
This is their first time, the man walks up to the girl and sits on the arm of the chair. The front and back shots are shot from the girl's left shoulder. The man appears short and weak in the picture. When the camera cuts back to the girl, the man still occupies only a small corner of the shot, with a blank top, and the girl occupies the entire frame on the right. The initiative of power is hereby self-evident.
The man put his hands on the girl's shoulders and slowly pulled her in. The two slowly approached the center of the picture, and their proportions in the frame gradually became equal. After taking off her clothes, the naked girl was slowly carried to the bed by the man. The sunlight from the crack of the door passed through the dark room and lightly sprinkled on the girl's body. The youthful body is the most clean and flawless, beautiful and moving. Like a budding rose, it is fragrant and not coquettish. This bodily beauty is Venusian beauty, a symbol of the vitality and purity of nature.
The soundtrack at the moment is not seductive or joyful, but terrifying. In the hearts of men, this is undoubtedly a taboo breaking. There was only a wall between the voices of the people outside the house and the forbidden fruit inside the house, and the man had not let go of the shackles of the world. In the end, the man turned his back to the wooden gate that blocked the world and showed sunlight, and at the girl's initiative, lifted the taboo belt.
The real orgasm is only two shots and only one action. A medium shot at the foot of the bed is at the man's slowly wriggling buttocks, and the camera cuts to a close-up of the girl's face. Whether in medium shots or close-ups, we don't see the man's expression because this moment is only for girls. A single framing and action foreshadows the purity and ignorance of all the first times in the world.
A director who knows this doesn't show sophistication when it comes to capturing men and women for the first time. Lars Von Trier is only "one two three" in "Female Addict". Lou Ye's "Summer Palace" is nothing but a dim and fuzzy wild together. After the end, the man scrubbed the girl's body, the sunlight outside the window shone on the front of the girl's body, but we only saw the shadow behind the girl, and the shyness of youth began to dim.
They lay on the bed and began to chat about each other's family affairs. This was the first time they opened up their hearts. From the body's frankness to the soul's confidence, sex became the key to unlocking the shackles of both sides. Instead of wearing a white suit, the man put on a black nightgown. The blue room allowed him to show his truest self. The camera progresses as their conversation progresses, from the man's face to the girl's. Finally, under the guidance of the girl, the two lingered again, and the camera slowly zoomed away at this time, indicating that the couple had embarked on a road that could not be turned back.
As night fell, the two lay naked on the bed in the great panorama of the room. The black shadow of the fan spins on the wall. Guys tell girls you will always remember this room, just like the director is telling the audience we will remember this room too.
In the castrated version, after the girl's skirt is removed from the man, all the scenes in the room are deleted. Therefore, the audience only vaguely knew that they had a relationship, but the audience did not know how the two went from being tense to being like glue, nor could they understand the unforgettable scene in the picture of the girl's life, and could not appreciate the change from body to soul. A blend of water and milk.
second night
The second time we met, the girl wore a white dress. Like all lovers in love, as soon as the girl enters the door, the two are lingering together. A thin wooden door barely isolates the cheating lovers from the noisy crowd on the street.
The emotion this time is strong, they are not on the bed, but at the door, with their backs facing the street that symbolizes public order, the two are no longer shy, have no scruples, and love each other on the floor at the door. The camera first peeks at the man and woman from a distance in the corner of the room, and slowly pulls in with the rhythm of the man and woman. This cuts to a close-up of the girl's face, moaning with her eyes closed, fully engaged in the relationship.
After the cloud and rain, the two were lying weakly on the floor, and the camera cut to a bed looking down. The neat sheets in the lower right corner of the screen tell the audience once again the urgency and willfulness of their choice to have sex on the ground. There is no gap in the hot emotions, even if it only takes a few steps from the door to the bed, but before the boiling love, that is the distance between heaven and earth.
The two were paralyzed on the ground, and the camera cut to the scene where the girl was tired and dozing off in class.
In the castrated version, we only see the man and the girl standing by the door kissing, with the girl's skirt removed. The audience did not know that they were lying on the ground, and the camera cut directly to the girl dozing off in class. Here, the audience only knows that they are in a hurry, but there is absolutely no way to perceive their lingering love for anything else from the emotions of their castrated limbs.
third night
The man slept naked on the bed, and the girl filled the room naked with water. She poured water into two dead potted plants in the corner of the room, a gesture that showed that she had made the room part of herself, and that people would only be free and naked in a space that they completely trusted. The nakedness on the bed is the honesty to oneself and the other party, and the nakedness in the space is the trust in the overall environment. She began to see the room as a part of her body and the man in the room as a part of her life. In this relationship, she became more and more comfortable and active.
She went to the bed, kissed the sleeping man, and teased him. The girl is dominant, she rides on the man. This time the audience finally saw the man's expression. The man gets up and hugs the girl, and the camera switches back and forth between the faces of the two. Big close-up images began to flash, lips, chest, nose, ears, fingers, buttocks, back, navel.
Different from the simple switching between long-range, medium-range and close-up before, this time the director chose a more complicated and messy editing, and the pictures were constantly and quickly switched in the close-up. The audience no longer knew their specific actions, only that they Like the two greedy snakes in the Garden of Eden, they swallowed all the apples they could see and explored all the unknown areas.
In the castrated version, the audience only sees a pair of hands watering the potted plants, nothing more, nothing more, nothing more. I can't see the girl's initiative, the absolute honesty, trust and true intimacy between the two.
fourth night
The girl took the man to meet her family. The girl's family looked down on the Chinese and kept embarrassing him throughout the meeting. The two returned to the room, and the man slapped the girl hard and pushed her onto the bed. Here the director gave a close-up shot from above. The girl is dressed, lying on a white bed, expressionless. The black shadow of the man shrouded the girl's face like the darkness in his heart.
A man vents his inner weakness and incompetence on girls through sex, which is the only thing he is good at. At this moment, the man did not regard the girl as his lover, and the girl did not regard the man as his lover. She was expressionless, as if nothing had happened and she was waiting for the man to finish.
The relationship began to come under social scrutiny—a contempt for the class and race of the local scholarly yellow family by poor white French families. The imbalance of the relationship between men and women in the social public space prompts men to be restored and satisfied in the power relationship in the private space.
In the castrated version, the man slaps the girl, and then she's gone. The audience only knows the anger of men, but they don't feel that men express their weakness through sex.
fifth night
The man and the girl took a bath together in the bathroom. They did not linger, but surrounded a tank of water, each pouring water on themselves. Afterwards, the man was wearing a black bathrobe and the woman was wearing a light blue nightdress. The two sat on the sofa and chatted like an old couple. The camera cuts back to the campus, where the female students in white skirts are frolicking on the campus, while the girl in a dark brown skirt is standing alone in the corner reading a book. A ball flew to the girl from the side of the playground, and another girl picked it up and said, "Oh, I touched her, it's really dirty. She has slept with a Chinese man." And the one who said this was a white girl. After all, in the French colonial region of Vietnam at that time, there were and only white people who could judge and criticize other white people.
In the castrated version, the bath scene was deleted. The line of the girl who picks up the ball has also been deleted. The audience only saw the girl being hit by the ball. Then silently walked back to the classroom. The original criticism of the same race and class was instantly reduced to simple campus cold violence.
The girl was watching the man pick up the bride in the downtown area, and the dress she was wearing was black. After the man got married, the girl went back to the room alone in a raincoat, and the raincoat was also black. From the light gray skirt at the beginning of the encounter, to the dark brown, to the black raincoat and skirt at the end, the color of the clothes indicates that the girl will sink step by step in this emotion, until she can't extricate herself.
There are three rains in the film: when the man goes to negotiate with his father to marry a white girl; when the girl's family sees her eldest brother on a boat back to France; and when the girl wears a raincoat to visit the man who is smoking opium in the room. The first rain is a man's weak and incompetent tears in front of his father, the second rain is a girl's mother's tears when she sees her eldest son back to France, and the third rain is a girl's sad tears when she sees a man give up on himself. The emotions of these three scenes are all suppressed. We did not see the characters in the camera cry directly. The director has been accumulating all the emotions. Until the end, when the girl heard the sound of the piano on the cruise, the tears were like a flood The big close-up shot made the audience only see the girl's rainy eyes, and the audience's suppressed emotions burst out with the girl's tears at this moment.
Five nights of castration are like five injections of male hormones. Hit me hard when I watched the castrated version. It made me like the chemically castrated Turing in The Imitation Game, completely losing the ability to perceive emotions and the world through sex.
Godard once said: "Give me a woman and a gun, and I can make movies." Sex and violence are eternal topics in art. The emotion of romance films and the shock of war films are precisely because of the effect of these two factors on human nature. The difference is that violence is destructive, while sex is growth. It should not be taboo, mystified or moralized, it should be a way of perceiving people and the world that each of us has to learn. And people who can't perceive sex appeal are pathetic.
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I haven't written many movie reviews in recent years, especially after I became a screenwriter. On the contrary, starting last year, I began to try to be my own independent film review podcast. Slowly I found that, compared with cold words, using voice to express opinions can make opinions more warm and personal.
The purpose of this podcast is also very simple and pure, not for profit, but to generate electricity with love. I simply hope that through this podcast, I can get to know more friends who like movies and creation.
Especially in the days when we can't make our favorite movie works, chatting about movies together may be the greatest comfort to ordinary life.
Anyway, this is a podcast of "talking about movies from the creator's point of view". At the end of each episode, we will open our minds together and magically change the story of the movie. Friends who are interested in movies or in creation can pay attention.
——2022.2.26
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