The MeToo movement that has prevailed in Europe and the United States in recent years not only gives women who have been abused and sexually assaulted in the film industry a chance to speak up, but also has a more far-reaching impact in giving women more protection and opportunities to play in the film industry. Just like this year in Cannes, four female directors were shortlisted for the main competition, which is probably rare in the history of Cannes. Three of these four works were written by French directors, and one was from Austria, with diverse themes and types, from classical to science fiction, from gender relations to homosexuality, and from Europe to the African continent across the Atlantic Ocean, all symbolizing the free expression of female directors. With a broad creative horizon. Among the four, my favorite is the jury award-winning work "Atlantic", even though the director is the youngest in terms of qualifications and age. Mati Diop (Mati Diop), a French female director of Senegalese origin, has previously played roles in director Claire Denis's films. Her father is a famous musician and her uncle is a famous Senegalese director. Djibril Diop Mambéty (Djibril Diop Mambéty).
Perhaps it is the relationship of blood. Her directorial debut feature film chose Dakar, the capital of Senegal, as the narrative background. The content tells about several young local workers who ventured across the Atlantic by boat in order to ask for a salary, and then triggered a series of bizarre and mysterious events. The beginning of the film is a scene where workers are asking for wages on the construction site. Even the few subsequent love portrayals are full of cliché realistic backgrounds, but what I did not expect is that the plot after going to sea transitions calmly to the horror and suspense type. , It is pleasantly surprised. The handling of this genre of film made the work quickly get rid of the usual realism and pedantic tone.
If the details in the genres such as mysterious fire, mobile phone text messages and police ghost upper body look old-fashioned, like the plot reappeared in Hong Kong movies in the 1980s and 1990s, then the poetic and psychedelic author style in the works is quite different. The director repeatedly used the sea and sunset shots to break through the barriers between the real environment and mysticism. The gray sea or the sea under the moonlight has multiple meanings. Although this vast ocean is a sad place for the hero's soul to break, it seems to refer to the turbulent and unbreakable love between the hero and the hero. The sunset scene implies that the hero's ghost is beginning to haunt, relying on the flesh of others to find his former lover. In the seaside bar, the colorful spotlights and mirror reflections have a psychedelic atmosphere, marking the climax of the reunion of ghosts and people.
Matti Diop’s ambition is not only to shoot an African version of "Human Ghost Love Is Unexpected". His distinctive author style emits a strange glimmer, penetrating the surface of this African ghost love story, and piercing it. The core of colonialism and hypocritical global integration. Regarding films on colonialism, this year I also saw two other works with similar expressions. In French director Bonello’s "Zombie Children", the man was turned into a living person by witchcraft to work hard for the plantation owner, and then escaped back to his family. In the Portuguese director Costa’s "Vitalina Varre" In La, the heroine living in Africa travels to Portugal to find her husband who works overseas, but finds that her husband has been dead for many days. In this film, it is more starkly reflected in the increasingly serious social problems of capitalists depriving workers of wages, creating disparity between the rich and the poor, and illegal immigration. The colonialism of the new era has further pierced the mask of global economic integration. Global integration originally opened up the economies of countries to each other, exchanged and cooperated with each other, but in essence caused developed countries to plunder resources from underdeveloped regions, causing these regions to fall into more trouble. Unbalanced economic situation.
As a director with both regional and cultural backgrounds, Matti Diop has the courage and courage to liberate women’s minds. In the film, they directly show that they boldly defy their parents’ orders, take the initiative to escape the social tradition of arranged marriages, and courageously pursue belonging Own love, calmly face the suffering in the process of growing up. This resistance spirit of women in pursuit of freedom also distinguishes Diop from other third-world directors who rely on mysticism or national aesthetics to quickly become popular. It also coincides with the true demands of women in the MeToo movement.
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