Watching the Dead: When it comes to the most suitable actors in movie history to play "sociopathic perverted characters", maybe every movie fan has a different candidate in mind, such as Anthony Hopkins, Heath Ledger, Huang Qiusheng, wait.
Looking at the current world of film, when it comes to acting, there is only one person I am most convinced of, Isabelle Huppert. I think that only she can really play such a difficult and ruthless role. As early as 18 years ago, we have seen her perverted acting skills through "Piano Teacher"; now there is another "Widow's Secret", which has made her full of perverted drama addiction.
Author | Songyuan
Watching the first ten minutes of "The Widow's Secret" will make people think that this is just another "cliché" about the emotional crisis of the city. The kindly bereaved girl Francis (Chloe Moretz) and the kindly lonely woman Greta (Isabel Huppert), because of an accidental gold collection, became attached to the tune of Liszt's "Dream of Love" , and each other filled the mother-daughter relationship that was missing from each other.
However, unfortunately, such a very confusing beginning did not bring us a plot trend that conforms to the movie's preset - "Emotional Crisis" is only half right, and the other half is a real threat to personal safety.
The nightmare begins when Francis stumbles upon the discovery that his so-called "gold collection" is really nothing more than falling into Greta's surprisingly sophisticated deception.
The seemingly polite Greta began to invade Francis's life constantly, stalking, harassing, secretly filming, and even threatening her best friend, and even blatantly provoking her in the restaurant where Francis worked. Francis' unintentional self-proclaimed "I'm like a sticky chewing gum" was used by Greta to the fullest.
And this piece of "chewing gum" in the literal sense was eventually spat on Francis' face by Greta. However, this is not the end, Francis' refusal and evasion will only make her go deeper into danger and become a victim of Greta's imprisonment step by step.
From the beginning of the mother and daughter filial piety to the follow-up hunting game, between the audience's unconsciousness, the dominant player occupying the camera's line of sight has quietly changed from Francis to Greta. From social platforms to real life, Greta's "peeping" of Francis' life is everywhere and pervasive.
In the second climax of the plot development, in the passage where a detective came to investigate but was unfortunately killed, Greta's peep was infinitely "copied" and then infinitely enlarged when she cleaned the bullet holes in the wall. Since then, the sense of security created by the first half of the movie has been continuously dissipated, and the crisis brought about by distorted emotions has also continued to escalate.
Director Neil Jordan has always liked to describe big cities in this way. In "The Widow's Secret", "New York will eat you alive", and in his more famous masterpiece "Pluto Breakfast", it is "London swallowed her". ; Linked to his predecessors "The Brave" and "Byzantium", Jordan is always trying to unearth the hidden undercurrents of the big city, both emotionally and physically.
However, unlike other directors who always emphasize the main characteristics of a certain city - those landmarks or people of various colors. Jordan is more adept at using the city as a shallow-focus backdrop for the plot to set off the heterogeneity and danger of the characters' lives in the foreground.
Positioned in "psychological suspense", this characteristic of Jordan's works is more prominently reflected in the film. Instead of laying out clues in the vast urban space, the main conflict scene is set in the home or restaurant. "The Widow's Secret" simplifies the complexity and creates a dilemma in both emotional and physical senses.
As Greta murmured, "Companionship always ends". So she kept dropping bait on the subway, taking advantage of the emotional weakness of others to bring herself abnormal company.
And when she abducted and imprisoned Francis, and failed to discipline Francis with the same method that tortured her own daughter to death, Greta would still ruthlessly turn her gaze to the next prey that was lured by the bait - ironically, The next person to come is not the prey, but the hunter who saves "Little Red Riding Hood".
Greta tries to discipline Francis by locking him in a box, and isn't Greta's home alone like a closed "box"? While creating dilemmas for Francis, Greta creates emotional dilemmas for herself.
Thanks to Isabelle Huppert, Greta's role was interpreted to the extreme. This is perhaps the biggest highlight of the whole film.
From a formerly gracious mother and elder, turned neurotic stalker and would-be murderer, Huppert's performance follows her usual restraint and coolness in such films. Minimizing the exaggerated performances that the dramatic transformation may bring, even just a slight change in facial expression, completes the isomorphism of the normal and the abnormal.
In the process of Greta's constant intrusion into Francis' life, Huppert successfully instills a "ghost" in Greta - no reason, lack of emotion, and haunting. As a result, the film successfully pulled back a game on the level of creating a tense psychological atmosphere.
This kind of anti-social personality has long been traced in Pell's previous works. The most reminiscent is undoubtedly the French director and one of the "Five Tigers of the New Wave" Chabrol collaborated with Huppert in 1995 "Grim Rites".
In the film, Huppert also plays a ruthless and entrenched killer, and it is her restrained performance that makes the killer's image even more terrifying - by reducing the difference between the characters before and after the murder, creating a sense of "no reason" evil".
In this "Widow's Secret", although the film briefly gives the reason for Greta's role change, this "evil" still hangs over the whole film like a lingering haze - especially in Greta When the detective's hindrance is resolved with an extremely elegant drug injection, and the hilarious impromptu dances.
It can be said that the film is basically supported by female characters. Just as in "Breakfast at Pluto" and "The Crying Game", director Neil Jordan also endowed the female characters with a delicate and even ambiguous emotional relationship, especially in Greta. And Francis goes far beyond the distorted emotional depiction of the mother-daughter relationship, which also makes the film's psychological passages appear richer and more three-dimensional.
It is a pity, however, that despite the addition of directors such as Neil Jordan who holds a silver bear and was nominated for an Oscar, as well as the main creators such as Moretz and Huppert, the film has not made any achievements in word of mouth. Even on IMBD and Rotten Tomatoes, it only got a mediocre score of 6.1 and a freshness of 59%.
The reason is probably because "The Widow's Secret" has been reduced to "old wine in new bottles".
Not to mention the interlopers who invade other people's lives and the setting of "Devil Mother", which have been shot countless times in various horror films, thrillers, and suspense films, and are "not new" to the audience. Moreover, the way the film itself is flat and straightforward also greatly reduces the fun of watching the film.
As mentioned before, it is good to render the film through the establishment of subtle psychological atmosphere, but the lack of tension in the plot setting can only gradually disintegrate this effect. The introduction of genre films can certainly provide a basic framework and set basic expectations for watching movies, but if you don’t try to break them, it will become a bondage-after stripping away the suspenseful atmosphere, “The Widow’s Secret” leaves the audience with only a little bit left. Just a wonder.
Author | Songyuan; public account | Watching a movie and seeing death
Editor | Teenager on the Roof; Please indicate the source for reprinting
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