The article was first published on the film's public account, Ka Rou Allard, welcome to pay attention and get resources.
Today I will talk about a French niche movie called "Going around in circles, everyone I love loves him".
Only the Beasts is classified as a thriller, but it's not scary at all, so don't be fooled by that. I saw the shadow of many suspense movies such as "Crash" and "Invisible Guest" in this film , so it should be regarded as a suspense drama.
The film involves a lot of elements, extramarital affairs, homosexuality, bisexuality, online dating, fraud, throwing corpses, hiding corpses.
After watching this film, I had two most intuitive experiences, one was like peeling an onion, peeling the truth layer by layer; the other was jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece to piece together the original appearance of the story.
So compared to the literal translation of "Only the Beast", I prefer another name given to it by the translation team, "Night Puzzle". The film chooses a filling narrative to promote development, constantly leaving questions and then answering them, and finally completing a closed-loop story.
The movie viewing experience is great, and in order to bring this experience to you, I also chose to tell the story with the same narrative method as the movie. The movie involves many people and complex character relationships, so I will call them by code names for convenience, and finally draw a character relationship diagram for everyone.
Let's start,
1
If you have already seen the movie, you can skip this part. You can also skip this part if you want to watch the movie without being spoiled.
The movie begins in a French town with a vast expanse of white snow. Xiao Ai comes to the neighbor Lao Qiao's house to deal with insurance matters. Xiao Ai makes a flirtatious look at Lao Qiao. Lao Qiao is Xiao Ai's cheating object. Xiao Ai loves this man who is a little neurotic and anxious, but when Lao Qiao is having sex with Xiao Ai, his eyes are full of absent-mindedness.
What's on old Joe's mind?
A missing woman has appeared in the town these days. Her car was parked on the side of the road, but no one was there. The police searched around to no avail.
Who is this woman? Why is she missing?
Xiao Ai's husband, Lao Mi, is a rancher. He stays in the office of the cowshed every day. Xiao Ai doesn't know what he is doing.
Xiao Ai went to Lao Qiao's house again and found that Lao Qiao's dog had been shot dead, and Lao Qiao also seemed in a trance. Xiao Ai was worried about whether her derailment was exposed. When she returned home, she found that her husband was also covered in blood. Xiao Ai thought that her husband had gone to fight with Lao Qiao. And the next day, Lao Mi miraculously disappeared.
Next, let's enter the perspective of Lao Qiao. Lao Qiao hid a female corpse in the straw pile of his house. It should be the missing woman the police are looking for these days. He slept with the female corpse and listened to music together. He felt that the corpse would give him a sense of security.
Because Lao Qiao had an Oedipus complex, after his mother passed away, he could not recover, and he did not bury his mother until his mother's body decomposed.
Later, Lao Qiao's dog kept barking at the corpse, and Lao Qiao shot his dog to death, fearing that things would be discovered. In the end, he chose to take the female corpse with him and jumped off the cliff.
The story of the missing woman, Lao Yi, begins with an affair . She is bisexual and hooks up with the beautiful young Mary in a restaurant on a business trip. Lao Yi just wanted a thrilling and pleasant one-night stand. Who knew that little Mary had moved all the way to Lao Yi's hometown to find her.
Lao Yi didn't let Little Mary live with her, saying that it was her husband's house, and Little Mary stubbornly lived in the campsite's RV. She waited for Lao Yi to come to her soft-hearted, but only when Lao Yi came to cut her off .
Little Mary was heartbroken, but an uninvited guest came, it was the old rice who seemed to be honest and friendly. When Lao Mi came up, he started to touch little Mary, and was kicked out by little Mary in the end.
What's going on here?
Black guy in Africa, let's call him black. He and the friends around him are doing online fraud. We are not unfamiliar with their methods. They buy photos and videos of good-looking girls and use these as bait to catch those otakus on the Internet, and then cheat money.
And this time, the bait that Xiao Hei found was little Mary, and the prey that was hooked was Lao Mi.
Xiao Hei chats with Lao Mi on the Internet in the name of Little Mary every day, gaining trust step by step. In the end, Lao Mi falls in love with this young and beautiful girl and satisfies all her demands.
Xiao Hei took the money cheated from Lao Mi, bought jewelry for his ex-girlfriend, and bought toys for their daughter. However, Xiao Hei's ex-girlfriend has been taken care of by a French white man. No matter how hard Xiao Hei tries, he can't give his girlfriend such favorable material conditions.
Later, Xiao Hei was arrested by the police, and Lao Mi also accidentally met the real little Mary who came to Lao Yi in his own town. Lao Mi thought that Lao Yi was the one who troubled Little Mary, so he followed her and strangled her in the snow.
But when she saw little Mary herself, the other party didn't know her at all. This made Lao Mi nervous. According to the phone call from the African police, he was going to Africa to find Xiao Hei.
However, the white man who took care of Xiao Hei's girlfriend was the husband of the missing woman, Lao Yi. When the husband saw that his wife was dead, he took Xiao Hei's girlfriend and children to France.
The story ends here.
2
Let us use the following picture to revisit this interlocking closed-loop story.
Life is a circle that surrounds each of us.
The film uses the famous six-degree relationship theory to establish the relationship between characters. In short, any two strangers can be related and connected in some way.
On the surface, this is a polyamorous love story where a loves b, b loves c, and c loves d. This kind of bloody plot is a bit like the unpredictable coincidences in our usual gossip circle of friends.
It's just that everyone in the movie lives in their own script, so their feelings are wishful thinking. Following the arrow in the above figure, we can complete a closed loop clockwise, but we cannot go counterclockwise again.
Just like what the old woman told Xiao Ai at the beginning of the movie.
"If you love your husband, then you are safe."
"As long as we love each other, nothing bad will happen."
Love is the most basic desire of human beings. When the desire for love cannot be satisfied and love is not available, people begin to release wildness like animals, and all "bad things" happen because of this.
In fact, it's not just love, people's desires are diverse, money, fame and fortune, freedom; think about everyone in the movie, they are striving for their own desires, unscrupulously trying to achieve their goals, and ultimately lead to everyone's tragedy. No one gets what they want in the end, and the bamboo basket is nothing.
3
Finally, Lao Mi found Xiao Hei in Africa, he grabbed his neck and asked him why did you lie to me? Xiaohei fled in a hurry and responded, I will definitely return the money to you.
Lao Mi said, I don't want money.
What you owe me is not about money, it is about feelings, it is the sustenance of the soul, and it makes me feel for a moment that I am no longer alone. For a humble person like me, there are young girls who are willing to spend time chatting with me, even if she is for my money, I don't care.
I think this is Lao Mi's inner monologue.
Lao Mi returned to the hotel, and was disappointed by the dialog box that was no longer up. Suddenly a new message came, "Are you there?"
"I'm here, darling!"
So such a French film with a somewhat absurd plot, the final destination is still so romantic.
Humans are all alone.
Because of loneliness, I cheated; because of loneliness, I was willing to sleep with a corpse; because of loneliness, I looked for young girls; because of loneliness, I chatted online; because of loneliness, I worked hard to make money, I hope you come back one day.
In the end, their loneliness, like their love, cannot be resolved.
Probably everyone is an island, many ships dock, but no one wants to go ashore.
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