The film cleverly arranges two story lines: Maléna, the protagonist of the story, has almost no right to speak in the film, and everything about her is given from the perspective of bystanders; the little boy, who is far away from all disturbances, acts as a bystander to witness. The development of the story, and his growth, has also become the core narrative thread of the film.
In the film, two story lines are alternately staged:
at the beginning of the film, the boy gets a bicycle, which means he is eligible to join the boy gang, and it is from here that he meets the beauty Maléna;
at first everyone just talked about Maléna having a lover, but Maléna chose to be right. These gossips were ignored, and the boy at this time was a shorts-only brat, daydreaming about making out with Maléna day and night;
when the boy finally put on the long pants he longed for, Maléna's life More and more she began to slip into the abyss. The pain of losing her father and the pressure of her livelihood, she had no choice but to start using her beauty in exchange for survival. At this time, the boy no longer made fun of others because they slandered Maléna. He just watched everything and shed tears silently.
On the eve of the storm, the boy ended his virginity in a gaudy brothel and completed the final A fantasy about Maléna, and then Maléna was humiliated and left sadly; in
the end, when Maléna returned to the town accompanied by her disabled husband, the boy had already become a teenager, put on a full-length suit, and was surrounded by people. There was a girl with him. And Maléna finally reconciled with the society after experiencing all kinds of turmoil, but finally the beauty is fading, and the legend is no longer.
As the "viewer" of the whole film, the little boy's growth process is what most boys have experienced: because of his infatuation and desire for the opposite sex in adolescence, he is doing one after another unrealistic but wonderful white. daydream. Finally, after realizing his powerlessness, he finally grew up from the simple and childish dream with a sense of loss. The scene in the film where the boy throws the record is very interesting: the camera pans, making people feel as if the record will fly far away, which is arousing reverie, but the camera turns sharply down, and the record falls into the sea in dejection like a broken ball. The boy's self-righteous love is disillusioned, that's how it feels.
Maléna, who is in the "watched" position throughout the film, gives the film's reflection on society and human nature. The most meaningful contrast in the film is the two bridges where Maléna walks:
most of the time, Maléna walks against pedestrians or the public's eyes and discussions. The most representative one is the scene where she cut her hair short and came to the square. The camera was deliberately shot from behind her. The crowd looked so estranged, which was a metaphor for Maléna's huge inner pressure. But he still faced all this with a resolute and brave image with an unbelievably glamorous image.
At the end of the film, the camera is even more carefully designed: there is a line of pedestrians in the distance, and Maléna carries heavy things and follows them slowly away. It meant that she finally accepted and obeyed the society.
But is this a happy ending? I don't think so. At the market, everyone greeted her just to avoid mentioning the original atrocity; stuffing her with something was a kind of sympathetic compensation. On the way home, Maléna adjusted the way she held the bag several times because the things were too heavy, and she was also revealing that her future life would not be easy.
The film is one of the director's "return trilogy". Maléna does walk back to the place where she first appeared at the end of the credits - her home. In contrast, the boy pedals his bicycle, away from Maléna, away from where he first met her, away from the beginning of all stories:
"...as if escaping, escaping desire, escaping innocence, escaping from her. .."
But he kept looking back. In the shot at this time, there are many pedestrians on the side of the road, all of them moving in the same direction as Maléna, and opposite to the boy. In the picture, the boy seems to be speeding away against the memory, but Maléna is gradually walking towards the dark place of the memory. The woman's return after all the hardships, and the boy's embarrassment and nostalgia for the past when he grows up, are presented in the most poetic way in such a set of ingenious shots.
The beauty and suffering of women, the commotion and growth of boys constitute the beautiful legend of Sicily.
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