I went to the next dormitory to borrow an offer, and inadvertently brought an extra piece of "The Unruly Beauty", which I didn't bother to watch. I thought it would be a dull, erotic and experimental French film, but there was no concept at all. One morning, the class was canceled, the French foreign teacher went to Cambodia, and the dormitory was not powered off, so I started watching the two-hour feature film without knowing anything about the film and expecting nothing.
The stories about drawing and women are intriguing to me. The story in the film takes place in an old painter's castle. In the hot summer in southern France, the quiet and shady castle, full of youthful and sexy beauties awakened the long-dry creative passion of the old painter, and a world-famous masterpiece may be born in the cooperation between the painter and the model as everyone expects. . Models and painters, women and art, how does this film interpret this classic, seductive, vulgar, and also profound theme?
At the beginning of the film, the long lazy sunshine of the southern French summer, the way the heroine walks barefoot in a dress and sandals, tells you that this is not a film to please the audience, but the director and the author want it. Say something, this way of speaking, with a typical European temperament of calmness, seriousness and elegance, and murder without blood.
As soon as the heroine entered the old painter's castle, she felt a certain uneasiness. She said to her boyfriend, "I think something is going to happen. Trust me." Feeling that she was in some kind of dangerous situation, the posture of her arms folded was an attempt to protect herself and resist the psychological reaction of being plundered. There is no suspense, no violence, but there are turbulent undercurrents under the calm lake. The whole film uses psychological tension to suppress your breathing.
Marianne became the model of the old painter, which was not her intention at first. When she learned that the three men, her boyfriend, the art dealer, and the old painter, decided to use her as a model to complete the paintings they were looking for, she was angry. and resist. Obviously, this beauty with a sexy body and full of youth is also a woman with a strong sense of autonomy. When she discussed the fate of women with the hostess of the castle, the former model of the painter, she obviously did not agree with the choice of the painter's wife to give up herself completely and depend on her husband. She believes that her xinxing is strong and that women should own themselves.
Marianne gradually became active in the painter's creation, because she was attracted by the charm of painting. Men love to create miracles, and women instinctively love to help miracles happen. She gave up her guard and plunged into this adventure. (Thinking of Beiming Shengong, ha) During their creation process, they also dealt with the worries of their wives, the jealousy of their boyfriends, and subtle emotional undercurrents, but in the end, nothing happened, and even the expected painting did not actually appear. I only saw the bright red background when the old painter sealed it in the studio wall, and the eyes of the model Marianne when she saw her portrait and the haggard she experienced after being painted. "For a good work, the canvas should be bloody." Thinking of this theory said by the old painter before, one can imagine the soul-stirringness of this masterpiece. In the end, the artist showed just another work, with a pale blue background, a woman's back, and no face. (so terse that I can't understand it). Under the bright sunshine on the outdoor lawn, everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, the tacit smile between the wife and the husband, the painter and the dealer began to discuss the price, the young boyfriend's confusion, and Marianne's inability to relax.
"For a good work, the canvas should be bloody." When I saw three men discussing using Marianne as a model, I wonder if the female audience would feel the same inexplicable resistance as I did at the time. What is a woman in the eyes of a man? Especially those artists, creators. They worship women the most, praise women, appreciate women, take women as inspiration and source of creation, euphemistically say: "eternal women, leading mankind to ascend." However, women do not occupy an equal position with them after all, they regard them as As the object to draw inspiration from, draw the essence from them and fulfill their artistic dreams. For them, what matters is not the person she is, but the beauty she symbolizes, the artistic creation that her beauty helps him complete, and the desire and pleasure of his creation. They think they are God. And what about women? She is in a position of being plundered. In the absorption of the other party and the re-creation of beauty, she is also silently consuming herself, youth, beauty, and life. When I was a child, I thought of reading an article written by Sanmao, "Recollection of Souls", saying that in the Sahara Desert, the locals were afraid of being photographed. They thought that when they were photographed, their souls were taken away by the film in the black box. Putting this story here, it is quite meaningful and can explain the relationship between women and creation.
For example, the painter's wife, who used to be his model, completely gave up her studies and future in order to follow him. Now she lives a long and peaceful life in the mountains with the old painter in seclusion in the castle, and enjoys making taxidermy in her spare time. Her body looks as if time had undergone liposuction. You can see that she was once a beautiful woman. Maybe she has a plump body and a bright face like Marianne today, but now she is old and degenerate, and has become a beautiful woman. His wife, the old painter can no longer find creative enthusiasm in her. It's not that she doesn't feel lonely and helpless, and it's not that she doesn't know that her life and blood have been brutally plundered.
Her hobby of taxidermy corresponds exactly to the artist's creation. The process of making animals into specimens is exactly the same as draining a fresh life, draining the life that should be left to fend for itself in nature, stitching, embalming, and binding them in order to preserve their prime. Beauty, an attempt to achieve some kind of eternity, but at the same time, what about the taxidermied bird itself? It no longer has the free life of soaring in the sky. Taxidermy is a bloody cruel, timeless art that achieves coagulation at the expense of flesh and blood.
The movie isn't the posturing stuff I thought it would be. The director's attitude is serious, the technique is elegant, and the European flavor is strong. I don't really recommend this movie that I watched by chance, because it is not very good to evaluate based on various elements of a good movie. At my rookie level, I don't quite understand it. I just feel a little depressing after reading it, because what I see is a kind of cruelty, the cruelty of men to women, and the cruelty of art to life. The above thoughts are inevitably superficial, and I will share them only for the purpose of inspiring others :)
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