Last Friday, domestic theaters quietly released a good film.
When this film was nominated for the Golden Lion Award in the main competition unit of the 74th Venice Film Festival, it was already the best film, best actress, best editing and other awards at the French Caesar Film Awards known as the "French Oscars". body.
This movie is a drama, but it has the atmosphere of a horror movie;
Although it is only the director's debut, it tells a story with a complete narrative and thought-provoking.
The story focuses on a heavy but often overlooked theme: domestic violence.
The first half of the movie seems a little dull:
A divorced couple has gone to a hearing to decide whether the man can share custody of his 11-year-old son Julian with the woman.
But through the judge's reading of Julian's testimony and subsequent cross-examination, the flat image of the couple gradually became three-dimensional:
The man, Anthony, is a domestic abuser. He often beats and scolds his wife and children. He once broke the wrist of his high school daughter who was in love;
After the divorce, she also harassed her ex-wife and children several times. The woman, Milan, had to change her phone number many times and move around with her children.
However, due to the lack of evidence to prove that the woman suffered coercion, the evidence that the daughter was subjected to violence was only an explanation issued by the nurse in the school hospital, which was not strong enough to prove;
In addition, the man's lawyer emphasized that the man's temperament outside the house is mild, "it is impossible to be violent" and other reasons, the final ruling is still that the two share the custody of Julian, and Julian's weekends and holidays belong to his parents.
If we say that the first half is just a foreshadowing of the characters' "personality", the atmosphere in the second half begins to gradually become tense:
Anthony, who declared that he loved the child, hugged the child and kissed him the last second.
The next second is to beat, scold, tear, smash tableware and chopsticks to children because of trivial matters.
They also forced the child to give out the woman's phone number, go to the place where the woman lived to "step on the spot", and take away the key to the woman's house.
At the daughter's birthday party, when I saw the woman talking to a strange man (the friend of the woman's sister), she began to question and finally grabbed the woman's neck. If the woman's sister hadn't arrived in time to save her, the consequences might have been unimaginable.
Please, the two are divorced by now, okay? !
But overwhelmed by the control, Anthony has lost his mind. He came to the woman's house with a shotgun --obviously, with the intent to hurt or even kill. After he opened the door of the woman's house, he smashed the inner door again, and approached the panic-stricken mother and son step by step...
Fortunately, under the remote guidance of the police, the woman and Julian were locked in the bathroom and lying in the bathtub to temporarily ensure safety.
Neighbors also called the police, which ended the story before Anthony actually shot and wounded.
The director uses ingenious audio-visual technology and lens language to create a tense viewing experience. The final scene of lying in the bathtub is reminiscent of the horror movie A Quiet Place - as if you'll be engulfed by monsters as soon as you make a sound.
But the film is about more than that. The most frightening thing is that "monsters" in horror movies are just fantasy, but what happens every minute and every second is reality.
Film theorist Andre Bazin said, "Film is the asymptote of reality."
Movies need to present reality to varying degrees, but due to the limitations of artistic creation, it can only be an "asymptote" of reality.
Just as people who have not experienced domestic violence may think that the artistic creation has exaggerated some plots during the viewing process, but in fact, the reality of domestic violence is far more cruel than the movie.
Just like a set of data in a movie trailer:
But even if domestic violence movies can only be "asymptote", at least it makes "crime" no longer just "secret".
In addition to "Guardianship", which presents domestic violence from the perspective of different characters, especially the victims of domestic violence, children, there are many domestic violence movies in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, which have aroused attention and extensive discussions on domestic violence issues in China.
For example, the Spanish film "Return" explores the theme of "women's struggle" - two generations of women in the film are going for murder and revenge due to domestic violence, but in reality, is there less bloody reality where wives can't bear their husbands domestic violence and murder their husbands?
Back in China, although a woman experiences domestic violence every 7 seconds, the number of films, the depth of discussion, and the social influence of domestic violence films are relatively limited.
The audience's first imagination is still focused on "Don't Talk to Strangers" before 18. Then there is "Night and Fog in Tin Shui Wai" directed by Xu Anhua 10 years ago and adapted from a real case.
"Master of Memory" two years ago was a surprise, but in the past two decades, nearly 100,000 women have committed suicide due to domestic violence every year (according to the statistics of the All-China Women's Federation in recent years), it is impossible to come up with only three stories.
The significance of domestic violence movies is to break through the inherent thinking of society for thousands of years——
1. Domestic violence is not a domestic affair, it is a crime.
2. The daily character of domestic abusers has nothing to do with domestic violence.
The perpetrator may be a well-dressed office worker or your mild-mannered friend, but when you get home, they are criminals.
These films also often present problems such as the difficulty of obtaining evidence of domestic violence and the imperfect protection mechanism for victims, which are also constantly torturing the legal system of this society.
The reality of domestic violence is a silent and huge iceberg.
It's not enough to be content with uncovering the tip of the iceberg. We still need more "Guardianship", deeper social understanding, and a more complete legal system to distance us from evil.
Originally published in Dutch Media Orange Umbrella, this article has been modified
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