"The Life of Adele" is a French film in 2013, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. What is particularly valuable is that the film won unanimous praise from three different groups of judges, film critics and audiences. "Adele's Life" is a work with extremely delicate shooting and narrative skills. It was originally a gay issue about two girls falling in love. An ordinary love story between two people with very different backgrounds and personalities. And an ordinary love story that was doomed to be boring was transformed into a moving tragedy with typicality and inevitability through the framework of literary and philosophical discussions, as well as the mix of realistic and romantic styles. The cinematographer's understanding and recognition of emotions.
The heroine of the film, Adele, is a high school girl with messy hair and rustic clothes. She likes literature but is not good at analysis and thinking. Her face is often ignorant, dazed and confused. One day, Adele passed a person on the road, a girl with beautiful short blue hair, sharp eyes, wild and confident manner. The girl's name is Emma, a fourth-year college student, an art major, loves philosophy, and always knows what she wants and why. In the hurried glance of the two of them, the only slow motion in the 3-hour film appeared, and everyone could see that it was love at first sight, and the fate of reunion and falling in love was destined to follow.
When the foreshadowed fate really came, the seeds of conflict were immediately planted, and a little realistic noise appeared in the main theme of passion and sweet love. Adele's parents talk about money and eat spaghetti in a large pot. The family background of the middle and lower classes is clear and thorough. Emma's parents talked about painting and ate raw oysters with fine wine, and undoubtedly lived in the upper class. In between, Adele's bewilderment and dazed clumsiness from time to time, as well as Emma's frowning several times inadvertently, are hinting that the main melody is about to change. A tragic tree that belongs to Adele sprouts.
"The Life of Adele" has a narrative structure similar to that of the ancient Greek tragedy. The proposition of the story is prompted before the plot, and the basic elements of "fate-conflict-helplessness" are laid out in sequence. The film presents Adele's state in literature class three times. The first class discussed the novel "The Story of Marianne" by French playwright Pierre de Marivaux. The topic of discussion was the inner feelings after falling in love at first sight. The plot is that Adele meets Emma for the first time and has a fondness for it. The second class discussed the famous Greek tragedy Antigone. The literature teacher said that tragedy is unavoidable. No matter what you do, tragedy is eternal existence, a concept that transcends time, which is different from the world. Rules have to do with the inner nature of human beings. After this, Adele was troubled by emotional tendencies, she reunited with Emma, interacted, and was criticized by her peers for her homosexuality. Adele was struggling with this, and at this time, the third literature class happened to talk about the French poet Francis Ponge's work "Water", which explained that gravity makes water always fall downward. Gravity is the defect of water, but gravity It's a natural law. If gravity is considered a defect, all nature is a defect, and vice versa. From then on, Adele fell into love and passion for Emma without hesitation.
This kind of structured, chapter-like structure arrangement can effectively promote the viewer's sense of rhythm and work quality, but it also creates ingenuity, highlighting the obvious intention of sensationalism and guiding understanding. However, the director's excellent filming techniques have nicely retouched these potential problems. There are a lot of close-up and hand-held follow-up shots in the film, and they follow the pace of Adele's life step by step. The pictures often focus on Adele's face, showing the blankness, simplicity, and even the dazed, innocent, even unadorned face that hangs on her face from time to time. It's an expression of ignorance. This way of shooting focuses the viewer's attention on Adele, creates a strong identity and resonance with her experiences and feelings, and creates an overwhelmingly realistic style. Therefore, when those deliberate prompts or elaborations pass behind Adele in the background, the viewer's attention is diverted to Adele, who has a face that is decoupled from the background events. The expression, the artificial and deliberate feeling was greatly diluted. At the same time, Adele's stunned state contrasts with the underlying tragedy when embarrassing and worrying negative events pass behind her. Although the main style of the film is realistic, the way of presenting Emma is romantic, with beautiful scenery and a yellow sunset. On the one hand, this way of handling highlights that the film takes Adele's perspective as the main line, on the other hand. It reconciles the dull atmosphere unique to the realistic style.
Violent love leads Adele to follow Emma all the way. In a blink of an eye, Adele has become a kindergarten teacher and established a common life with Emma. It was only after the initial passion subsided that the differences between the two took all the nourishment to grow wildly. Adele still had a mess of hair, but Emma had washed the flamboyant blue from her hair. Adele is content with a simple two-person life, but Emma is eager to open up a whole world for her paintings. Adele has never been able to integrate into Emma's life. She doesn't understand Emma's art and Emma's concept of art. In Emma's circle of friends, everyone is as unattainable as a noble, and every topic is as unfathomable as philosophy. Although Adele tried her best to dedicate herself and manage her life, and Emma kept trying to improve Adele's ideological level, the expression on Adele's face was still more at a loss, and Emma's heart became more and more alienated.
The fuse of Adele and Emma's final breakup was that Adele cheated because of loneliness. But even if that's not the case, the breakup is a matter of time. All this has nothing to do with the gender of the two people, only about the differences in each other's background and personality. When they first met, Emma inadvertently said to Adele that Sartre's "existence precedes essence". She said that there is no right or wrong in the way everyone exists. She also said that Sartre's greatness The point is to allow everyone to be themselves. Under the golden sunlight, Emma who said these words was so dashing and handsome that Adele was intoxicated and obsessed with her life. Adele wanted to be a teacher when she was a student, and she also longed to stay by Emma's side. Now her ideal has come true. Adele has become the person she wanted to be, but Emma said that she didn't want this. Emma wants an Adele with a deep thinking and writing pursuit. But is this Adele still Adele? Adele tried, but she couldn't, just couldn't. Love, growth, and everyone are so similar.
The story didn't end there after Adele and Emma broke up. The two met again three years later. In the past three years, Adele had not had a good life. She was still a teacher, still alone, always lonely, always missing Emma. Time has not changed Adele a lot, she still has a child-like face and a child-like heart. Sitting face to face in the cafe, Adele cried and told her feelings for Emma, begging Emma to return to her side. This situation made Emma infinitely sentimental, but life is not a child's play. If you lose, you can start over. Now Emma is a well-known painter and will hold an exhibition in a well-known gallery. She also has a new partner, a new family. The new partner is similar to Emma in background and spirituality. Although the two have some shortcomings in terms of sex, life is always about trade-offs. One can want everything, but never get everything. Emma said that she was fascinated by Sartre's philosophical theories in high school, including freedom of choice in "existence before essence", and responsibility after choice.
The last time Adele saw Emma was at Emma's art exhibition. Although she was well-dressed, Adele still looked like an outsider from a different class, with the wrong look on her face. The bewildered look of the place. In the distance of the gallery is the laughter of Emma and her partner, surrounded by champagne, gourmet food and all kinds of fancy clothes, and the walls display all kinds of works that Emma painted for her new partner. The only painting with Adele left hangs in the corner. When Emma's new partner greeted Adele, she pointed at the painting with a smile and said: You are still here. In the class before coming to the gallery, Adele read a French children's poem "No Need" for the children, "The elephant's trunk is used to pick pistachios, there is no need to bend down; the giraffe's long neck is for To pick the stars, there is no need to fly; the chameleon's skin is green, blue, pink, white, to hide from animals, there is no need to run away; the poet's poetry is to recite all he says, and thousands of others There is no need to understand things." Adele's life is to be a teacher, and she loves literature but does not understand art and philosophy, so there is no need to change. It's just that such Adele didn't belong here before, doesn't belong here now, and won't belong here in the future.
Adele turned away silently, without saying goodbye to anyone, and no one saying goodbye to her. There was no more distressed look of bewilderment in the picture, what was left was just a back figure in a blue dress with a cigarette in his hand, who was leaving firmly. A man in the gallery chased after him. This was someone who had known Adele many years ago. He had always had a good impression of Adele and repeatedly suggested her to travel. However, the man ran after a few steps in the opposite wrong direction. That's fine, so what if you catch up? After all, this man belongs to Emma's class, unless Adele is no longer satisfied with the little dream of being a teacher and starts traveling, and stops being a person who always only loves Emma and begins to fall in love with men, unless Adele is wronged By herself, changing herself, or even giving up being herself, she and this man are destined to repeat the same tragic story.
Falling in love is easy, getting along is hard. "Adele's Life" expands a love affair between the same sex into a painful experience that most people have experienced, and elevates this painful experience into a life dilemma that no one can escape. In life, everyone should have the freedom to be themselves, and no one should be forced to change, but everyone refuses to change, and it is destined to affect the freedom of others to be themselves. This is Sartre's "existence precedes essence". The dilemma between "others is hell" is also the dilemma in Antigone. Hegel used Antigone as an example to illustrate the tragic nature of conflict. He believed that the brave man must adhere to his own ethical values, but when both brave men adhere to their own ethical values, conflicts inevitably arise. , and insisting on one's own beliefs has to deny or destroy the other's beliefs, which is doomed to the tragedy of the conflict. Adele refuses to deny herself, she is not happy, but she is a brave woman. But, is it really a zero-sum game between people?
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