Text | Tang Wei
"Bookstore" from Spanish female director Isabel Cosette is quite dazzling. Because it swept 12 nominations at the 2018 Goya Awards (Oscar in Spain), and finally won the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards.
But the film is an English-language film set in a British seaside town in the 1950s. Talking about:
Widow Florence (Emily Mortimer) opens a bookstore in an old house that has been abandoned for many years, and hires a clever little girl Kristin as an assistant, despite the worst encounters in the town. Strong opposition from the powerful Lady Garmart (Emily Mortimer) - she wants to open an arts centre in an old house, but unexpectedly gets Mr. Browndig (Bill Mortimer) from the oldest family in the area. Nye), a book-loving but unusually withdrawn widower. Mrs. Garmat uses various means to try to bring down the bookstore, and a competition begins...
·Consistent communication, the theme of loneliness
The film is based on Penelope Fitzgerald's novel "The Bookshop".
The reduction degree of the movie is very high, and book fans can rest assured. But that doesn't mean the director is slacking off. On the contrary, she adds the most cosette content to this small-town start-up story in England: an exploration of the theme of communication.
The division between Cosette and Penelope may have started from the motivation for opening a bookstore.
Florence in the movie opened a bookstore from the memory of her deceased husband. As Florence strokes the old house, she flashes back to a fragment of her reading with her lover when she was young. As the narrator said, when Florence opened a book, she felt her deceased husband return to her side.
The reason for opening a bookstore in the original book is much simpler, but Florence felt that there should be a bookstore in the town. As for the description of the deceased husband, it only mentions Florence's bookstore partner when she was young, and there is no romanticization in the love part.
In the novel, Florence is "little, lean and stocky," while Brondig has a short neck, dark eyes, and shabby clothes.
In the film, under the shaping of two veteran British actors, Florence became an intellectual and artistic British lady, while Brondig was an elegant and neat British gentleman. The subtle feelings that burst out between the two, if there is no accident of Brandish, may become a Darcy-Elizabethan love in this cold seaside town.
The first conversation was in Brondig's huge but windy house. The bereaved and the bereaved. In the temptation of eyes and words, the two lonely souls mustered the courage to try to be honest, communicate and accept.
The second dialogue was on the beautiful seaside but the sea breeze. The British gentleman and lady's sense of restraint and restraint blew in the wind, "forced to be alone" and "enjoyed loneliness", Brandich took the initiative to help, Flo Lance moved forward. The sea wind is cold, and people who are enemies of the whole world have found each other.
Exploring the possibility of communication and testing the psychological distance between people have always been the themes of Cosette's films.
In "The Secret Life of Words", the communication hidden in silence, the love that burst out and almost lost in the communication, is the rescue of the drowning survival of the tragic individual under the genocide.
Cosette films often meet lonely people and begin a dislocation of love with a tragic color to present this theme, such as the East Asian female killer and white prey in "The Map of the Voice of Tokyo", such as "Elegy" in full bloom schoolgirls and old teachers.
·Simple but powerful female power
As a female director, Cosette is most often talked about as a woman. Compared with its predecessor, this time, "Bookstore" has a more obvious female label, from the director to the original author, from the protagonist to the supporting role, the "villain", and a woman of water.
The film took out the story line of the little girl Christine Xiaosheng's entrance exam in the novel. Under the background at that time, not going to middle school meant that you could only go to technical school to study.
In the end, Christine didn't get into middle school, for which Christine's mother called it a "death penalty." The "sentence" is so heavy just because it means "what chance does she have to meet and marry a white-collar guy? She can't find a guy higher than the working class or even the unemployed." And this It will bring more serious and long-term consequences: "She has to dry her clothes all her life."
That is: girls study for a higher education in order to pick a blind date with a higher education, doesn't it correspond to some current educational concepts?
Cosette pulled the clue, and in a bleak and frustrated ending, retaliated against the town by burning down the old house with a rebellious fire in Christine.
And a few years later, a bright and spacious modern bookstore was opened by Christine, the girl who didn't like to read many years ago.
Thus, Florence's victory was declared.
Whether it is the respect for books or the courage of women, it is passed down with the lacquer tray and the "Hurricane of Jamaica" that Florence left to Christine.
In the novel, the little girl who had to dry her own clothes before she was admitted to middle school finally became a bookstore manager in the movie.
When asked what makes it different to be a female director, Cosette once replied: "It's a thousand times more aggressive, tenacious and determined than any male."
In the book, there is a third-person comment on Florence's courage to fight against everyone:
Florence's courage, unlike Mr. Brandich's contempt for the whole world, "is just a determination to survive after all".
Whether it's Florence, Christine in the story, or Cosette off-screen, female power is so simple but powerful.
·Reflecting the historical background of Spain
There may still be domestic audiences who will be curious, why does "Bookstore" win so many awards?
Perhaps also related to a major event in Spain in 2017.
Cosette was born in Barcelona. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, Spain. Catalonia is located in the northeastern part of Spain. Due to historical, geographical, language, and economic differences, there have been many independence movements in the history of Catalonia. Seek independence from Spain.
The most recent was an independence vote at the end of October 2017, and the result: Independence failed.
The "Bookstore" was released in Spain on November 10, 2017.
The conservative, narrow-minded, ostracizing and self-sufficient small-town people represented by Madame Gammat can be compared to the Catalan independents, while Florence and Brondig can be seen to be more tolerant of external culture. Dependents who are inclusive and at odds with mainstream opinion. Cosette said that in Barcelona, non-independent cultural figures were almost marginal and never appeared on Catalan television, which undoubtedly matched what happened to Florence.
After the movie was released, Cosette, who lives in Barcelona, had the same experience. When Cosette went out, he was thrown objects and insulted from time to time.
In the United Kingdom, where the story takes place, some people compare the interpretation to the struggles of British classes and political parties in the post-war period in the 1950s, and some people correspond to the reflection on Brexit in the post-Brexit era.
Either interpretation is not Cosette's original intention, but Cosette did openly express her opposition to the Catalan independence movement, which she believes is outdated, and does not believe that a post-independence Catalonia can have a good time.
This is indeed Cosette's view of the country. Cosette has worked in many countries, has had many foreign boyfriends, and most of the films he has made are in English.
She even had early connections with China: during the 2010 World Expo, the millet baby in the Spanish pavilion who spit bubbles and kept saying hola (hello) came from Cosette.
The Source of All Power: Books
Since it is a story about books, it is inevitable to discuss books.
Although the film mentions many books (mostly novels) such as Dombey and Son and The Age of Innocence, the two most prominent are Lolita and Fahrenheit 451.
"Fahrenheit 451" is the first book to be sent out after the bookstore opened, and it is also the beginning of the story of Florence and Brondig; Florence and Brandish's first conversation.
If the ethical love tragedy of "Lolita" demonstrates the courage of Florence and Brondig to fight against the secular world, then "Fahrenheit 451" has formed an intertextuality with the film in terms of story.
"Fahrenheit 451" imagines an absurd future in which books are banned and burned. A group of book lovers memorize books in their minds to insist on the truth to protect books. Cosette abandoned the ending of the protagonist's sad departure in the original bookstore, and instead borrowed from "Fahrenheit 451" to avenge the narrowness of the town with a fire. 451 Fahrenheit, which is the temperature at which the fire burns.
Years later, the arsonist Christine grew up and opened a bookstore. The actor of the old Christine, who is also the source of the narration voice, Julie Christie, is the star of the movie "Fahrenheit 451".
This emphasis on "Fahrenheit 451" is because it is one of the books that has had the greatest impact on teenage Cosette.
Cosette completes her answer to the question of communication and the power of women with a novel that has been deeply imprinted in her youth.
People are so different, they have different political opinions, different occupations and different classes, but they have to live in the same world.
What makes the widowhood and loneliness cross the chasm of the soul?
How can a woman be the enemy of the whole world?
In the last scene of the film, when the elderly Christine turns off the lights in the bookstore, the narrator says: "In a bookstore, one is never alone."
Yes, life is not easy, only words can best give you the courage to live.
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