This film is adapted from the novel of the same name by French philosophy professor Yeli Babe. The time span of the entire film is not long, only 165 days, to be precise, only 9 days, in just a few days. , gradually knocked on the disguised shell of a seemingly humble, mean, and indifferent gatekeeper, allowing us to see the image of a noble lady with real kindness, noble and elegant temperament.
The story takes place in a high-end apartment residence on the Central Street in Paris, France. There are five households and a janitor in the whole apartment. The rich resident and the poor janitor live their lives together in this building step by step. until a new Japanese resident moved to the building, and with his arrival, a series of interactions with the gatekeeper became a main line to promote the development of the plot. The story line of the whole film is simple and clear, and a large number of shots are used to show the details of the characters' characters, which gently but profoundly explain to the audience that the elegant and noble soul does not care about gorgeous clothes, but in words and deeds. The attitude of life revealed by nature.
Paloma: The Gifted Girl's Suicide Plan
The film begins with a video-reported self-report of a little girl who wants to commit suicide 165 days later, on her twelfth birthday. This little girl is Paloma, one of the three protagonists in the film. In Paloma's own words, she was born in a rich family, and she will be a rich person in the future, and will continue to live when she grows up. The life of a rich person who can see the bottom line is just as she thought, everyone is a fish living in a fish tank, and the poor can't escape the shackles of the fish tank all their lives. I had the idea of suicide to make a living, and the only thing I wanted to do before committing suicide was to make a movie to let everyone know that everyone was just a goldfish in a fishbowl.
Here we can know that this is a gifted child whose philosophical cognition far exceeds that of his peers and even adults. Geniuses are lonely, and she is no exception. In the eyes of others and even family members, she is a quirky little boy. Girl, she is always shooting with an old camera, but everyone just knows that she is shooting, and no one cares what she is shooting or thinking.
She was born into a wealthy family. Her father is a government official. She focuses on her career every day and rarely pays attention to her family. Her mother is a family who has ten years of experience in psychotherapy and still lives on tranquilizers. The housewife and the elder sister are a vain philistine graduate student in the Philosophy Department. They seem to have a peaceful and harmonious family atmosphere, but in fact they are just focusing on their own affairs, maintaining their usual stereotypes about the people and things around them, and there is no one To a certain extent, it is common for the wealthy residents of the whole building to want to care about unrelated things. The communication between people seems polite and friendly on the surface, but in fact it is just a mechanical exchange of words. Empty, even when Paloma said she wanted to be a janitor when she grew up, her parents just said without hesitation: "No matter what you want to do, we will support you" seems to respect Paloma's choice, but in fact It's just perfunctory words, and there is no willingness to inquire deeply at all.
It is also in such an indifferent living environment that Paloma, who has super insight and a true temperament, makes her words and deeds seem out of place. She often hides because she wants to have a space that will not be disturbed, and is considered by her family to be weird and unsocial; a guest who likes to show off ignorance comes to the house, claiming that Go was invented by Japan, she refuted the guest on the spot that Go was invented by the Chinese, He also explained in detail the difference between Go and Xiangqi, which embarrassed the guests and was reprimanded by his father.
Paloma uses her immature but mature perspective to observe and photograph the people and things around her. At the same time, she is quietly implementing her "suicide plan" - stealing an antidepressant from her mother's medicine box every day. of tranquilizers to achieve lethal doses. During this period, she also often simulated other methods of death, such as sudden death, jumping off the building, caesarean section... Finally, she was forced to give up because of the unbearable pain in these methods of death. The thought of the little girl committing suicide because of suicide seemed ridiculous, which also showed that The author's reservations about the extreme idea of a little girl. In the film, the discussion on the topic of life and death is placed on a little girl, which makes the audience's attitude towards death less heavy and tense. .
Michelle Renee: The janitor with a room full of books
The story begins in this apartment where the rich lived. One of the residents died suddenly due to heart problems. While Paloma was busy with a camera to capture the process of adults and the police handling the bodies, the janitor Michelle. Ellen Renee's cat, who had been missing for several days, suddenly appeared, and Paloma, who was playing with an old camera all day, became the best target to be dispatched in the chaotic scene of a bunch of adults. She was asked to send the cat back to Mrs. Michelle's residence, and it was precisely because of this chance that she entered Renee's room, and she had since made her a different janitor.
Renee's room is right next to the gate on the first floor of this building. The one-bedroom and one-bedroom rooms are well-organized, clean and tidy. It doesn't look like the residence of an old man who lives alone. What surprises Paloma the most is the place on the table. An open philosophy book, with a bag of leftover dark chocolate and a pot of tea next to the book, this different gatekeeper aroused Paloma's strong interest, so Paloma's filming The subject has an extra gatekeeper.
Not long after the sudden death incident, a new Japanese resident, Mr. Ozu Grande, moved into the building immediately. The intermediary wife briefly introduced the new resident to Mrs. Michelle, but she just wanted Mrs. Michelle to cooperate to open the door that needs to be moved in and out. As well as giving the key to the mailbox of the new resident, Mrs. Michele complied with the request of the intermediary wife with a blank face, perfectly showing the indifference, politeness and cooperation of a standard doorman. The only difference, Mr. Ozugran asked. When the original resident was what kind of person you were, the intermediary's wife said it was a happy family, and Mrs. Michele blurted out: "Happy families are all the same." Mrs. Shell's words: "Unfortunate families are different."
Mrs. Michelle's surprised expression suddenly replaced the acerbic and indifferent expression before. She seemed to be familiar with such a dialogue scene, but she was not sure. After Mrs. Intermediary and Mr. Ozugran left, Mrs. Michelle returned to the room and opened the door. The room that was originally supposed to be a bedroom was surprisingly not a bedroom, but a study full of various books. The bookshelves of different categories were neatly arranged around the room. I picked up a Russian book "Anna Karenina" from the bookshelf and turned to the book "Happy families are all the same, but unfortunate families are different", it seemed to confirm his conjecture, his face There was a rare smile that was not easy to show.
Ozugran: a humble and gentle Japanese gentleman
Mr. Ozugran is an elegant Japanese gentleman, gentle and humble, and like Paloma, he also has an eye for finding differences. A chance encounter in an elevator, Mr. Ozugran and Paloma chatted about Mrs. Michelle, and the two agreed that Mrs. Michelle was a different person, which seemed to make the old and the young learn more outside of Japanese. One more interesting common topic. Paloma said that Mrs. Michele "appears to be sharp and indifferent to people, but deep down she is very emotional, she appears extremely withdrawn, and her manner is extremely elegant" These conclusions are drawn from her daily observations alone. , which made Mr. Ozugran feel the same way, and at the same time, he also had a little more affection for this little girl who everyone thought was strange.
Compared with this talented girl, Mr. Ozugran is more like a wise old man, without sharp edges and corners, he is more modest and tolerant in dealing with others, just like Paloma described his cats as two " A wine sack and rice bag fed with exquisite food." Mr. Ozugran said with a smile, "I believe in the generosity and compassion of oak trees, so I believe in everything that cats have."
In the film, these two people are wiser than most of their peers. The relationship between the two is more like a comparison of the wisdom and cognition of two different age groups. , the self-cognition system that was born, subtly infected Paloma, and was gradually shaking the little girl's idea of suicide.
The conversation at the first meeting left a deep impression on Mr. Ozugran and Mrs. Michelle. After that, Mr. Ozugrand often invited Mrs. Michelle to dinner at his house. Contact, the film has gradually entered the climax stage.
Renee came to Mr. Ozu's house for the first time, Japanese decoration, toilet music, door lock direction, ramen food... Facing this series of new things, Renee seemed a little embarrassed, but she was still honest in her words and deeds. She is not used to eating Japanese food, borrowing skirts from others, being a little withdrawn when she rarely socializes, etc. In the eyes of ordinary people, she said frankly about the things that cannot be said in order to make a good impression on the other party when they first met, But in Mr. Ozu's point of view, these shortcomings that she considers herself are all the kind and elegant real Renee that she takes care to cover up with her indifferent and mean attitude towards others.
Before leaving, Renee noticed a painting of the Tokyo Mountains hanging in Mr. Ozu's house, and remembered a Japanese movie she liked. It happened that the director of this movie was also named Ozu, and she was asking if Mr. Ozu and the director belonged to the same family. When it came to the Ozu family, the answer was no. Renee's expression of reassurance seemed to have solved a long-standing puzzle. It was real and natural, and it also made the audience sigh secretly. This is indeed a different person who likes to read books. Movie gatekeeper.
Hedgehog finding hiding place
After several contacts with Mr. Ozu, the relationship between Renee and Mr. Ozu gradually became close relatives. At the same time, the relationship between Paloma and Renee, who often secretly filmed Renee, was gradually sublimated, and they were also allowed to shoot in an upright manner. When Paloma asked Renee to talk about herself to the camera, Renee's evaluation of herself: "Long, short and ugly, cautious, indifferent but very polite, everyone dislikes but acceptable, because it completely fits a look. The role of a doorman" except that he does not say that he still has a preference for reading, and the precise description in one go is like reading an irrelevant text.
Renee, who calls herself a janitor, knows the characteristics a qualified janitor should have. She adheres to a series of characteristics such as humbleness, taciturnity, hard work, and reclusiveness. Seems like a standard gatekeeper to outsiders, because "nobody wants to hire a pretentious gatekeeper."
In fact, Renee enriches her soul with books in addition to this stable job. In this hypocritical social environment where most people only care about themselves, no one will pay attention to a widowed, childless, lonely and humble person. What was the doorman thinking, in Paloma's words, Renee had found a good hiding place.
The accumulation of a lot of reading has given Renee an elegant, independent, and insightful conversation. After gradually discovering these hidden qualities that Renee is not known for, Mr. Ozu wants to further sublime their relationship, but Renee hesitates. After Renee rejected the request to celebrate her birthday with Mr. Ozu, Renee cried out of control. The humble feeling brought by the native class made her not dare to accept this feeling, but deep in her heart, she yearned for it. The arrival of a beautiful love, the film omits the premise that Renee's sister has been deeply hurt by the rich, but it does not affect the natural presentation of Renee's inner ambivalence. She hugged Paloma and couldn't help crying. When she woke up, at that moment she seemed to be slowly removing her disguise as a janitor.
In the end, Renee agreed to her request to have a birthday dinner with Mr. Ozu. After dressing up Renee, her noble and elegant temperament naturally appeared, more like a kind of noble self-cultivation revealed in her bones. The embellishment made the doorkeeper, who was familiar to everyone, not recognized for a while. The honorific title of "Madame" surprised Renee, but Mr. Ozu calmly told Renee: "Because they never saw you".
Just when Renee was about to begin to gradually remove those disguised characteristics that did not belong to her and show her true self, a sudden car accident ended all the audience's fantasies about Renee's future. Renee's sudden death brought to an abrupt end the originally delicate and smooth plot in the film, which caught the audience by surprise, and at the same time made another protagonist in the play, Paloma, realize that death does not need to be deliberately sought, it may What happens every minute and every second that follows is not the process of dying, but what you did before the sudden death.
Renee's death caused Mr. Ozu to lose a close lover and completely dispelled Paloma's idea of suicide. The sudden death arranged in the film avoided the deepening of Renee and Mr. Ozugran's class-different love. The extension, on the contrary, continues the pure and single character of the main line of the story, and also makes the film less heavy on the discussion of social and environmental topics, allowing the audience to focus on this indifferent and acerbic gatekeeper who has been indifferent and acerbic for more than 20 years. In fact, in her hedgehog-like disguise There is an elegant and lively soul, as the so-called secular vision is the same, interesting souls are different, everyone can be illusory in life, and everyone can be active.
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