The challenge of the middle age is (though for me it's the very beginning of the middle age): every time I come back to China it is either to attend someone’s funeral, or to see someone for the last time. The charm of the middle age is: I’m being presented with the unfathomable depth and width of life, from its very beginning, through its ongoing process, till the end of it.
I thought China was close, but now I think it’s very far. Nevertheless, I am going to make more return trips as long as my father is still there.
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The hardest part about leaving for the first generation immigrants is not the decision to leave, nor the moment of leaving, but to leave everything behind and never being able to come back again, or being able to come back but only to leave again with more and more left behind and less and less hold upon to.
The heart-wrenchingly realistic and humane 2011 Iranian film “A Separation” is about the hard decision and process for the wife to leave and the husband to stay, with the complications of a teenage daughter, an Alzheimer father and a baby died in the belly. There's nothing right or wrong about leaving or staying. It is about the price of justice, the price of personal choice. For either side, the leaving and separation will just be the beginning of a story that will last and impact several generations. Peter Bradshaw’s review about Past Lives is so astute that I don’t have anything more to say about this wonderful feature debut by Celine Song. Read this: “This is a story of lost love and childhood crush, the painful and dangerous access to the past given by digital media; the roads not taken, the lives not led, the futile luxury of regret. And it’s a movie that speaks to the migrant experience and the way this creates lifelong alternative realities in the mind: the self that could have stayed behind in the old country, versus the one that went abroad for a new future.”
And how fitting the circumstances were under which I watched it. I started watching it on the plane back to Seattle from China two months ago by myself, only for about half an hour before the plane landed and me back to the role of a mother. I resumed it on the plane to China from Seattle three days ago again by myself but had to pause it due to my eyes aching from crying (not over the film but my mother). I finally finished it at 3am lying on the bed where mom was used to. I have always been all about going to new places, better places, bigger dreams, but I am just a Chinese girl from a tiny village in China, being instructed and cared by dozens of uncles and aunties and brothers and sisters about every step in mom’s funeral, after having left the village 25 years ago. I miss her. The last TV series I watched in 2023 is “Sex Education”, all the four seasons, and I was very impressed by the performance of the crew, especially Emma Mackey (who also starred in “Eiffel” with Romain Duris), Asa Butterfield, Ncuti Gatwa, Aimee Lou Wood, Connor Swindells, Mimi Keene, Gillian Anderson. I am also impressed by the very mature and exemplary treatment of its sex and communication themes.
The story boils down to how to deal with human relationships, particularly the intimate part, between boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls, man and woman, husband and wife, parents and children, sisters and brothers, believers and non-believers, white and black, all in a very honest, realistic and relatable way. Growing up in China where everything seemed to be a taboo except for food, I envy with red eyes and an aching heart about the open and thorough communication permeating in the series. Actually I am as envious as to doubt whether a small-town British 16-year-old is really capable of those master-level communication and action about those petty and necessary challenges of life, like using or asking to use a condom every time during sex; being proud and determined, even though not without any bitterness or challenges, about their gender identity; apologizing or making up for their mistakes or misbehaviors in a timely manner; and going all the way to the essence of their intentions and desires (except between the two main characters Maeve and Otis where delays and misunderstandings were necessary props for story development). But whether a 16-year-old is capable of all those sensible words and deeds is not the point. The point is that I learnt a lot from those teenagers and their parents, and I started to imagine and hope that life could be so rewardingly eventful for my own children as they would be entering adulthood, or is this more or less what is happening with the teenagers now? (The 2021 French high school TV series “Voltair High” seems to be comparable to “Sex Education” but it is set in the 1960s France and has a different focus, even though they share some topics and the character setting is quite similar too. “Voltair High” has only released one season so far.) I have very mixed feelings towards the actor Shu Qi. I cannot say that I really like her, but I am definitely fascinated by her. Her style of performance in most of the films is quite similar. The numerous drunk scenes easily remind one of “Millennium Manbo” (2001) by Hsiao-Hsien Hou. Her characteristic smiles shine through in each of the films she has starred in. If Maggie Cheung embodies the classic beauty, Shu Qi radiates the urban spirit. She also has this seductively innocent look of a child that makes one hard not to sympathize with. I do like her.
The film “A Beautiful Life” is a pretty banal romance with lots of hard-to-believe plots and too-perfect-to-be-real characters, but I still cried over it. Even as an ultimate and thorough pessimist, I still would like to believe those life-changing accidents, coincidences and decisions, because life is full of surprises, good or bad. If you find them hard to believe, it’s probably that you haven’t lived long enough or you are just being lucky not having to experience the unfathomable depth of life. Yes, there can be tragedies like those in the film, and yes, there can be true love and a happy but never easy ending like that. I have been avoiding this film due to its Kung fu theme, but Wong Kar-wai never disappoints. Even a Kung fu film becomes so art-house in his hands with his characteristic aesthetics and his all-time favorite crew (Tony Leung, Chang Chen, Ziyi Zhang, etc) The Kung fu scenes are artistic and to the point, the dialogues are minimal but each sentence is classic, the love story between the two main characters is restrained but holds up the whole film, the background spans about 15 years through numerous historical events but changes barely noticeably. It’s a film not about Kung fu after all, but about human relations, between husband and wife, teachers and students, father and daughter, lovers, opponents, oneself and the world. Tony Leung is impeccable, Ziyi Zhang is perfect with every pose of Kung fu just as she did 13 years ago in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Their partnership naturally reminds one of their collaboration 9 years ago in 2046. It seems they never aged but they have, and an era will be gone.
Directed by the tenaciously intellectual female director Ann Hui, Boat People is the most heart-wrenching and mind-blowing film I’ve seen since at least a decade.
Set in a period of Vietnamese history which is a taboo for Chinese history education, it is eye-opening and value-challenging for Chinese audience. The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The film starts about three years after the Communist takeover, a Japanese photo-journalist travels to Vietnam to document the country’s seemingly triumphant rebirth. When he befriends a 14-year-old girl and her destitute family, however, he begins to discover what the government doesn’t want him to see: the brutal, often shocking reality of life in a country where political repression and poverty haver forced many to resort to desperate measures in order to survive. George Lam looks perfect to act as the Japanese photo-journalist (but why Japanese one may ask?), and the acting of the fresh and new Season Ma as the teenage is impeccably stunning (one may ask why she chose to stop her acting career in the 1990s). The deeply controlled and humanistic approach by the transcending polemic HK New Wave director Ann Hui makes the harrowing experience of the characters so haunting for the spectators. Shot in China’s Hainan island, the film was banned by Taiwan because one of the leading actors is from Mainland China (Qi Mengshi). It was also banned by China because it portrays the cruel slaughter of the victorious Communist Party in Vietnam. Still, it was already a wonder that it was allowed to be shot in mainland China at all. So hail to the 1980s! There are numerous details in the film to be talked about, but I will leave them out. The French is always freaking frank about things, such as the translation of the film: Passeport Pour l’Enfer, on this incredible poster. A film customized for Maggie Cheung by the French director Olivier Assayas who became Cheung’s first and only husband shortly after the completion of the film. Cheung was playing herself, a HK actress who was known in the west as the parter of Kongfu master Jackie Chan but was surprisingly chosen by a French director to remake Louis Feuillade’s 1916 classic Les Vampires. The film was shot complete in a couple of months without a single retake. It must have been a very refreshening role for Cheung to be dressed in a latex cat suit found in a sex shop working with a chaotic and arrogant French crew who showed no respect or understanding to her acting or opinions, and this is where Assayas made Irma Vep into a memorable film, by cleverly demonstrating the ridicule of the French film industry as well as paying homage to the Nouvelle Vague masters. All typically French I would say. As for Cheung’s performance in it, I like what Nick Burton said in his review: “To see Maggie Cheung in this remarkable film is to fall in love with her.” I think that applies to most of her films from 1998.
I have been puzzled by the film “In the Mood for Love” over years. One of my and many’s favorite, it is one of the world classics thanks to its masterful cinematography, and editing, use of colors, montages and music, not to mention the dazzling visual presentation of the two stars. The story is simple, the dialogue is minimalist. Every frame is essential and crucial with little to no transition between them. You need to pay attention to every detail to get the sense of the passing of time, changing of space, fluctuations of mood: the Qi-pao she wears, the food they eat, the wall paper of the rooms, the color of the telephones, the pattern of the neckties, the way they sat to each other, the position of the clock hands, the direction she walks the stairs, the way he looks, the fleeting smiles on his face.
I’ve been feeling like a self-absorbent detective, watching the film again and again, trying to solve the mystery of their not being together. I am not satisfied with the answer of personal moral constraint or social pressure, or even the innate personality of shyness and passiveness, which have been conversed and concluded by so many reviews, as if it’s just a pure story of masterfully suppressed love filled with longing and missing. Even if he was not sure if she would leave her cheating husband to follow him to Singapore, by the time she made it all the way from Hong Kong to his room in Singapore, took away her slippers that he had been carrying with him all this time, called him from his room while he was working in the newspaper office but without saying a word, he should have known about her feelings towards him, that he could be together with her if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He never wanted actually, not because of any moral constraint, or social pressure, or lack of courage, but because that was never part of his plan. Yes, he had a plan, and the plan was to seduce her, and to abandon her, in order to punish her husband who has an affair with his wife, or simply to punish her because she holds herself so high that she keeps saying that she is not like his wife. It is hard for me and probably many, to perceive him as a player and a schemer. That would totally destroy the innocent and noble image of the two loving birds, but looking even closer to his facial expressions, and listening more carefully to his conversations with his closest friend A-Bing, that is the only answer to the agonizing question of them not being together. His plan went very well, except that he found him falling in love with her as well. He is not plagued by morality, but guilt. Morality is passed to us from the society and you could shake if off. Guilt is caused by yourself, and there’s no way to run away from it. A newspaper reporter and amateur martial arts novel writer, his closest friend is a street gangster who gambles on horse matches even when he is hospitalized, and after losing the gamble, goes straight to a brothel with no money left and has to leave his ID there, cannot buy back his ID after the deadline and comes to borrow money from him, he is definitely a much more sophisticated person as shown in this film. What we see is just the tip of an iceberg, which doesn’t emerge fully until in the equally masterful film of 2046, where he evolves into a womanizer. The idea of him planning to seduce and abandon her is not my original thought. I have learnt this from some in-depth reviews written in Chinese. I searched to see if there’s any review in English with the similar idea, but none. Though everyone is entitled to have their own understanding and interpretation of the film, I cannot help lamenting about how much gets lost in translation, when presenting to an audience of another culture. I have similar feelings about another one of my favorite Chinese films: Comrades, Almost a Love Story. All of the reviews I read in English simply regard it as a love story full of unbelievable accidents, fates and predictions, a love story that spans a decade, and over two continents, with a cliched happy ending, even though the title of the film clearly states that it is just “almost” a love story, that it is about two “comrades”. The comrades who are indeed lovers are not separated by wars, conspiracy or any third party, and tried their best to be together, as a typical epic love film would be. Instead, they are not together simply because she chose to out of her own will, and she made that choice not once, but twice. And the most interesting and cultural part of this film is to understand why she would make that choice again and again. The reviews I read in English never come to ask this question, the ones I read in Chinese do. And your answer to this question reflects your own values and experiences. To share a bit of mine: I totally understand and may even agree with her choices. What about you? 有一两个月没看电影了。突然想到《甜蜜蜜》,连续两个深更半夜娃儿们终于躺下了,看了两遍。看完脑子里是一片乱哄哄的空白,不知从哪里开始抽出头绪。去看影评,发现英文名叫Comrades:Almost a Love Story,译得不能更传神达意。顺口说一句,纽约时报的英文影评肤浅得不堪入目,豆瓣上倒是有几篇影评犀利深刻。《甜蜜蜜》不是一部爱情电影,即使满片都是邓丽君甜腻腻的歌声。只有结尾最后的意外(注定)相逢,才落入爱情片的俗套,但是毕竟已经纠缠了十年了,在电影里最后还是要在一起的,然后落幕,刚刚好。
导演可能想要以小见大地映照出一代香港/大陆人的生活,但是,这故事又何尝不是普天之下的故事呢?理想和爱情不一致的时候,你选择哪个?李和黎都很现实地选择了理想,不管那理想是多宏大还是多琐碎,不管是主动还是被动地选择,他们都“放下”了爱情。是的,那是爱情。爱情它没有那么伟大,爱情就是个很暂时、很偶然、很便利的东西。在它那短暂的持续里,它有强大的威力,可以使人盲目,做出很“伟大”的举动来。但是李绝对不是那种在爱情前盲目的人。自始至终,她都很清醒,知道自己的理想是什么。被黑社会大佬爱上,那是她的能耐,更是她的幸运,暂且不表这位大佬是多么难得地有情有义而又洞察秋毫。黎没有大志,单纯但不愚蠢,感性又不失理性,勤劳能干还有一技之长。他知明地,即使是被迫地,和李说了“再见”,然后短短两年里,李和黎都实现了自己的理想。 但是理想实现了,两人并没有幸福。就像当初说理想是要考上名牌大学,是要当科学家宇航员,然后发现一个理想实现了,新的需求又冒出来了。这就是人之所以为人吧。黎的故事很简单,也很不真实地幸运,一路从香港做饭到纽约,标准美国梦的模版。温饱问题解决后,就是情感的需求。我觉得影片里黎最勇敢的时候,就是在码头没有等到李回来,回家后还是像他在床上对李说的那样,对老婆说出了实话,也对自己说出了实话:“我们回不去了”。李呢,大富大贵大涛大浪过后,也终究是一个拿到了绿卡的普通人。乡下的房子盖好了,大佬可能还给她留下了积蓄,也是到了想要个娃的时候了。这时候,他们再次偶遇,天时地利人和了。这里爱情的成分是:在纽约的这么四五年,他们竟然都各自没有“爱情故事”。黎的心里一直都只有李,在电影里有清晰地表达。但是李的心里是不是一直都只有黎,那就不得而知了。我反而觉得,她和大佬之间的故事,才是“爱情”真正的模样。那相逢后的相视而笑,必要经受日后柴米油盐的考验。“爱情”才真正开始。但谁说非要天长地久,谁说必得日夜恩爱?爱情进行时,那就是最美的样子,那就是活着的价值。 我说《甜蜜蜜》不是一部爱情电影,却通篇都在说“爱情”。这里的“爱情”,有一半可以用“生活”来代替吧。理想只是一个目标,并不是生活本身,也不是生活的意义。年轻时很具体地说想要什么什么,中年后发现想要的其实是一种状态。状态很多时候难以言说,并且处于动态之中,比理想和目标难以捕捉多了,但是达到那种状态的快感,值得用一生去寻寻觅觅。 P.S. 我不确定外国人能不能真正感受到这部电影,所以我也懒得用英文写影评啦。 P.P.S. 两年后1998年黎明和舒淇拍《玻璃之城》,似乎想延续《甜蜜蜜》的那份传奇,但是《玻璃之城》差《甜蜜蜜》不知道多少个级别,不管是剧情、台词、表演、还是拍摄。 |
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