This is a review of the female addicts I and II.
In terms of narrative method, the film generally adopts the reentry method of forward narrative-flashback-forward narrative, and the flashback part is composed of the heroine Joe's self-reported experience + Joe/Seligman's on-the-spot insights and associations. As the film progresses gradually, the suspense of Joe's situation at the beginning of the film is gradually revealed. Personally, I feel that the heroine's self-report has a sense of intermittent linear growth diary. Contacting the director's other works, the director may have the interest of chapters and chapters, but for this film, Joe's retrospection of his various stages makes Joe's life fragments. The presentation becomes a bit passive. In other words, childhood, youth, and adult Joe are narrated by Joe who is talking to Seligman on the spot, but in fact, childhood Joe can be narrated by young Joe, and young Joe can be narrated by adult Joe, which can Create a more three-dimensional narrative web.
------Character creation and story core------
When Joe is constantly affirming her instinctual sexual desire, the worldly moral code stands on the opposite side of her, because under the measure of worldly morality, her desire becomes "excessive", "destroying the ethics of husband and wife", "blasphemy" God" and needs to be restrained and healed. The heroine's self-report can be summed up as follows: she went from being obscure to being sexually rebellious to facing up to and defending her sexual desires, and gradually came to know herself.
The insights of the intellectual Seligman are interspersed between Joe's self-reports. Although he can understand what Joe has been through and consider himself a feminist, because he cannot empathize with a natural and heterogeneous desire, he is always conscious or not. Consciously carry out moral exhortation, this kind of moral exhortation is a kind of gentle negation. He hopes to incorporate Joe's heterogeneous desire into the understandable and existing cultural background, but he has never been able to face up to the impact of this heterogeneous desire on the existing cultural background. cultural exclusion. I think Seligman presents a kind of rational conceit and cowardice, which are two aspects of human nature. They originate from the pursuit of integrity and ignore the exclusionary factors. Similarly, they are afraid that there are some restless and provocative factors in the whole. , jeopardizing the integrity and uniqueness of the whole.
This is shown in the movie, that is, Seligman, like a search engine, who often makes incorrect word associations where empathy is needed. You can imagine, when you throw something to the web search box because of some emotional fluctuations. When you come up with relevant words and phrases, the responses you get are uncommon search associations that have nothing to do with your experience and somatosensory sensations. This tree-like divergence of concepts is presented in the film with audio-visual materials. In this film, it is the director's way of portraying the character of Seligman. At the same time, this is also a film element of Von Trier. Some people say that the look and feel Much like a film essay, I personally prefer to call this element a "search engine". (This element is also used in Von Trier's recent work "This house is made by me".)
When Joe was doing sex addiction treatment, he first smeared off the mirror at home. After contacting Joe, he saw his childhood self in the mirror in the treatment center. He can understand the covering and reappearance of the mirror as the covering and reappearance of self-desire. The epitome of Joe's mental journey.
On the other hand, Seligman's "mirror" seems to be obscured all the time, and his instinctive desire is covered up by the later desire for knowledge, because dealing with words seems to be able to go beyond the desire to reach the object, it seems that the intellect can grasp a "clean" object, However, the result is clear. When emotions and knowledge are disconnected, he can only do search engine-like non-empathetic associations. He can't experience the pain of pedophile men like Joe, because he often resorts to desire in morality. At the end of the film, when Seligman's sexual urge is on the rise, he does not hesitate to throw away all the previous moral rhetoric and attempt to molest Joe, the reason is consistent with Seligman's character, because Seligman's knowledge , Morality and lust have an obvious tendency to split. In extreme cases, he can only choose between two choices. Therefore, in his heart, Joe is not only a respectable woman who pursues herself, but also a slut who can vent her desires. woman.
Many people criticized the director for arranging the reversal of Seligman's ending film too abruptly. I also agree that there is such abruptness, but the consequences are not character motives, blurred characters, and broken plots (because, as previously analyzed, Seligman's reason for this move is is sufficient), but the reversal at the end of the film makes the audience lack sympathy and room for understanding him, and may cast a completely negative impression on him, which is equivalent to forcing a character's interpretation space to a corner at the last moment. Was Seligman turned out to be a wolf in an elaborate cultural mask? If the reversal at the end of the film freezes the audience's impression of the character here, then this "one appearance and one mile" character modeling method is a bit blatant and thin.
Seeing human nature from moral discussions is the director's specialty. This film provides a platform for thinking in terms of narrative content and character building. Both Joe and Seligman represent different faces of human nature. Many people are debating whether this film represents a feminist position, I think it is better to say that the film discusses the fundamental sources and dynamics of feminism.
One of the most dynamic and fundamental sources of a certain political appeal of man is the instinctual desire of man. Different political demands may conflict with each other in cultural contexts, but they may share the same undertone of desire. Joe's sexual desire has a transcendental or even transcendental meaning in the film (childhood self-sexual contact and "floating" sexual experience), all kinds of taboos around sexual desire, Joe provoked and suppressed by it, and finally surpassed it, The reason for being able to transcend is precisely the clear, natural sexuality of Joe's childhood, as pure as a tree. Joe may have understood that the pure gesture of desire should be an agitation like "I want", "I want", "I love", "I hate", not something to desire, which expresses the individual's intention and originality goodness (not bound by universal moral principles), when you substitute the object of desire for the desire itself, desire is imprisoned. The steadfast love and the moral law and social system tied to this chain are a pity for Joe, because the loved him/her, the contract of love, and the crystallization of love cannot replace her erotic desire in the end. And when the outside world tries to discipline Joe's erotic desires mentally and physically, or when Joe compromises on the weaker side of human nature (as at the end of the end credits, Joe hopes to correct his desires), Joe is destined to stretch her will to power and dominate herself desire to regain control of the body.
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