The two split personalities of Xiu Qiang and herself constitute most of the content of the film. Dreams, hallucinations, and reality are all intertwined. Sometimes it's true and sometimes it's false, and coupled with the narrative technique of interlude, the audience is confused. And the director also left the truth of the story to the end.
Let's talk about split personality first. Xiu Qiang loved her dead sister very much. She didn't want her sister to leave her, so she created the personality of Xiulian. At the same time, the guilt of her sister's death and the resentment of her stepmother created the character of her stepmother. In this way, the self-blame of the younger sister can be transferred to the stepmother, so in her fantasy, the stepmother often bullies Xiulian. So the stepmother bullied Xiulian, Xiuqiang comforted Xiulian, and the story of Xiuqiang quarreling with her stepmother for Xiulian began. Among them, because Xiu Qiang has the personality of a stepmother, she sometimes loves and sometimes hates her father. She would lie on her father's bed in her stepmother's pajamas and make up, and she would yell at him. (As for whether her personality as Xiu Qiang has the emotion of Electra remains to be studied). As the story progresses, the truth gradually emerges, and the most motivating scene is when the father tells Xiuqiang that sister Xiuqiang is dead. This forced Xiu Qiang's split personality, Xiulian, to die. Of course, she also imposed all these sins on another split personality - the stepmother. So there is a plot where the stepmother dismembers Xiulian, and Xiu Qiang fights with the stepmother, which is also the climax of the film. When the stepmother came to visit Xiuqiang, she faced the real stepmother and completely shattered Xiuqiang's split stepmother's personality. (During this period, the director used a circular angle to make the climax more tense.) This made Xiuqiang pulled back to reality, and she had to face the pain of losing her sister, the pain of losing her mother, and the pain of her father abandoning the family. Hatred, self-blame for not being able to save her sister. Because she couldn't stand the pain, Xiu Qiang heard Xiulian's whistle again, suggesting that Xiu Qiang would not let Xiulian leave her no matter what. The stepmother is also revenge by the ghosts of her mother and Xiulian. After that, it was time for the decryption of the film: the biological mother committed suicide because of her husband's derailment; Xiulian died because she could not be rescued; the stepmother suffocated Xiulian because of Xiu Qiang's bad attitude towards herself. And Xiu Qiang's step forward after hesitating also decided Xiulian's death, and also created the whole story. Without this step of Xiu Qiang, there would not be so many sad stories.
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