Baxter is an ordinary employee of a large insurance company in New York. With the ideal of youth, he finds that he can only obtain a small living space in reality. In order to stand out, Baxter lent his bachelor apartment to several senior employees of the company. They needed Baxter's bachelor apartment as a rendezvous place because of their extramarital affairs, and Baxter needed the recommendation of several senior employees. The ordinary life of young people needs the decoration of love. Baxter is obsessed with the company's elevator lady, Fran, but in fact, Fran, who is young and beautiful but can't even type, is the extramarital lover of a higher-level employee of the company, Jeff. While Baxter pursued Fran, Jeff also became one of Baxter's "customers", and thanks to Jeff's help, Baxter got the coveted manager position, but also found that Fran was his boss's lover. Fran, who was emotionally frustrated with Jeff, attempted suicide and was accidentally rescued by Baxter. After a series of twists and turns, the lovers finally got married.
Of course, like all prince and princess fairy tales, this is a beautiful bubble woven out to comfort those helpless and hopeless souls. In the United States in the 1960s, the rapid economic development brought great changes to people's material life. Ordinary people could enjoy a rich material life in return for their busy and monotonous work. But at the same time, people's spiritual emptiness is also magnified by the materialized urban life. In the workplace, mutual use of intrigue, frequent extramarital affairs, and affection have become a quick outlet to cope with social pressure. The busy and compact pace of life, exquisite and fashionable clothing and accessories, and people who indulge in fun and wanton kissing have become the characteristics of the times. However, young people are full of disillusionment behind this kind of life. After graduating from a famous Baxter school, they have dreams in their hearts, but they can only rely on renting out their single apartment to get a little improvement in their career and pursue a beautiful love. He was easily defeated in front of him, and when he was finally able to fully "use" his bachelor's apartment and bring his girlfriend home, he found Fran who was also disillusioned and attempted suicide. Of course, the plot after this became surreal, it was a dose of hallucinogen delivered by the director, or the writer, or the producer, not because they were cunning, but because those 9-to-5 people needed this hallucinations. In "Coffee Commune", Woody Allen did not let the plot develop like this. He let the heroine leave the hero without hesitation and chose a mature and wealthy extramarital partner. Then at the reunion many years later, I told the audience, "Look, it's not all the same." In fact, it was just a change in the packaging and batch of hallucinogens. What doesn't change is the same people.
Mike Haneke said, "Times and problems will repeat, only clothes will change." Whenever I see men and women in extramarital affairs in movies, I think of this sentence, and then think of Zhang Guoli in "A Sigh". expression. This is not simple moral correctness, it is not simple how to manage love, it is human nature, psychology, history, society, politics, and all those complicated enough to not be a movie, a few novels, and a half-year circle of friends can say Clear things up. Neither "Peachy Apartment" nor "Coffee Commune" want to explore such a complicated truth. Fortunately, there is Haneke, there is Rohmer, there is Bergman, there is Maurice Piara, there is Hong Sangxiu, and so on. And being in that infinite complexity, in my opinion, is one of the only meanings of life.
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