I first knew about the film "Natalie" because of its remake of "Chloe", but I really decided to watch it after watching the wonderful performances of the two in "Eight Beauty". This is not a hearty erotic film, nor does it have the desperate, rather jade-like burst of passion at the end of the remake. The whole film is full of explicit sexual descriptions, but if we really look for Natalie's inner emotions, we still find it like a mystery. The language itself has the meaning of revealing, but for Natalie it is a detour and concealment. She hides her true feelings in instrumental lies, and her pureness in obscene words. Similarly, Catherine was also unpredictable, only showing a relaxed and unburdened look when she was drunk. Many comments mentioned that the reversal of the plot was expected, and it was only after the whole story was understood that they could understand the hints of previous words and eyes, and understand the fermentation of the two people's feelings during the silence.
Natalie, whose real name is Marina, works in a private venue in Paris. She entered the porn industry at the age of seven, experienced wandering in a hotel as her home, and met all kinds of clients. She has her own wisdom and goals. She knows that a job that depends on her body and beauty cannot last long, so she works as a licensed beautician in a shopping mall during the day, hoping to turn to a full-time job one day. She also has a life of her own, skating with friends in her spare time and relaxing in a gay bar where everyone knows her after get off work. It's her job to talk, and it's her job to pretend - to care about clients, to pretend to be debauched, to pretend to be orgasm. But in her personal life, she was quite a reticent person. Walking with my friends, I just laughed and listened to their conversations without saying a word; when I was at the clinic and my mother's house with Katherine, a few words of greeting were always followed by a silence. She seldom directly reveals her thoughts and desires, and mostly uses detours in Bernard's name. Her explicit words to Catherine were a seduction, a tactful expression of her own lust, and a hopelessness that she knew would end. She knew from the beginning that her feelings for Catherine were destined to not get an equal response, and the closeness maintained by lies would one day be broken and alienated, but her helpless love could not be controlled. The two had two conflicts, but they were reconciled with Catherine's reconciliation. It is believed that Catherine was attracted by Marina. Marlina may have secretly thought of breaking up after two conflicts, but in the face of Catherine's recovery, she almost continued her previous lies and love without thinking.
In the dialogue and background music, the boring director and screenwriter have incorporated a lot of overt or covert revealing. In the scene where the two met for the first time, Marina turned around to find this special customer, stared and thought, turned around, picked up the tray, and walked towards Catherine. Catherine, who had already noticed Marina, hurriedly took a cigarette at this time, as if to hide her inner nervousness. The background music constantly sings "All the colors are changing", which is to say that the two people's lives have changed since then, and it is also that the two people are curious and fond of each other. Marina chatted with Catherine like a professional habit, and from time to time she said some witty words that made Catherine smile. After the first narration, Marina took Catherine's money and put it in her bag, which seemed to have revealed the extension of her trust and affection for Catherine.
In the next scene, Marina tells Catherine that she has reached an orgasm at work, which has never happened before. This is another seduction and teasing of Katherine, and it is also Natalie's self-disclosure - the orgasm is false, but the love is true; the cheating Bernard is false, but the love for Catherine is true. We can translate it like this: Marina is in love with her customer in a way that has never happened in her working life. Coupled with Marina's sincere eyes and Ruo's smile at this time, the following sentence "It's all your fault" has a double meaning. This conversation can be regarded as a confession completed by Marina using her own secret words. Catherine didn't read the code words, but secretly raised the corner of her mouth, she was more pleased for Marina's climax than she was angry with Bernard. The next day, she even bought a bouquet of flowers herself to comfort herself, as if to celebrate Marina.
After the second quarrel between the two, Catherine found Marina at the mall and offered to make peace. Facing Catherine's willingness to continue the plan, Marina was arrogant and said, "I thought our relationship was over." After hearing Catherine's denial, she lowered her head and thought for a second before saying that she saw Bernard again. Express a desire to still engage with Katherine. The words after that were almost express: "I'm a little emotional, I thought I would never see you again", clearly expressing the loneliness and hopelessness after the quarrel that day. Catherine heard that Marina's apartment was expired, and took the initiative to rent a house for her, partly out of preventing Bernard from renting it for her, partly out of concern for Marina.
The director seems to have a strong preference for the song "Boogie Street", not only referencing it twice in the feature film, but also cutting it into the trailer. I thought that the director took it as Marina's inner monologue, citing two different lyrics when skating and in the taxi, and the fineness and fit reached an outrageous level, which can not be called the ultimate boring show. .
First look at the lyrics of a quote from skating:
A sip of wine, a cigarette And then it's time to go I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo I'm wanted at the traffic-jam They're saving me a seat.
When she was silent, Marina always seemed to be very worried, and her joy and anger were invisible. When traveling with friends, the director did not choose other more interactive activities, but chose ice skating, a single-person, silent sport. When Marina's figure moved on the ice rink, what was she thinking about in her heart? The next scene cuts to Catherine's family having dinner in the evening, and Marina is on the phone with Catherine at a crowded station and sends out an invitation. These two scenes, intentionally or unintentionally, echo the "kitchenette" and "traffic-jam" in the lyrics.
The taxi scene is the most erotic part of the whole film. The lyrics quoted here not only directly express the turbulent mood of Marina at the moment, but we can also feel Catherine's expression of her thoughts to Marina through her drunkenness:
And what I am Is back on Boogie Street And oh my love, I still recall The pleasures that we knew; The rivers and the waterfall Wherein I bathed with you Bewildered by your beauty there I'd kneel to dry your feet By such instructions you prepare A man…
In the car, Marina looked silently ahead, turned her head to look at Katherine cautiously and boldly, and quickly looked back. Catherine leaned back, her eyes rolled to look at Marina and her surroundings, as if she was in control of what she was about to say. After discovering Marina and her staring at each other, Catherine looked ahead and slowly said "I'm going home", then closed her eyes. After listening, Marina turned her eyes involuntarily, thinking about the meaning and response of this sentence, then turned her head to glance at Catherine, lowered her head and raised her head, and replied softly, "I will send you." Catherine naturally leaned on Malina's shoulder, and her left hand with the ring was on Malina's arm. In this scene, Catherine looked innocent and relaxed. Marina looked down at the two bodies next to each other, and then looked at Catherine, who had completely put down her guard. The corners of her mouth rose and fell quickly. When he raised his eyes again, tears were half full, and his nose twitched. This beauty is real, moving, and also short-lived, from the beginning to the end. Marina is moved by the tenderness of this moment, but she cannot avoid the heartache of the beauty that will end in the end. The image of "going home" always reminds me of what Faye Wong sang in "Holiday": "Let's let it go now, be as happy as possible now, remember as much as possible now, and always have to go home." The wonderful time the two spent together this night It's like a vacation, and they all "know the dream that can't be woken up". When Catherine said that sentence, she was full of reluctance and helplessness; all Marina could do was to accompany her for a short ride on the way. The background music stopped abruptly when it reached "a man", and then switched to the picture where Bernard walked out. The director seemed to want to present the reality to the audience at once through the intertext between the lyrics and the picture, mercilessly breaking the previous dream.
Marina knew from the beginning to the end that Catherine could not leave Bernard, and she had no intention of alienating her. One of her most straightforward attempts was to directly ask Catherine "if she still loves him", to which Catherine replied that she didn't know. Finally, when Catherine said "I don't care about him anymore", Marina just approached cautiously and said calmly, "It's not true, or you would have left him long ago". But Catherine did gradually become attracted to Marina. In the beginning, she stood nervously in the dressing room of the bar in the face of Marlene's explicit description, her fingers twitching restlessly. After that, she gradually shared her life, her own emotions with Marina, and was curious about Marlina's past. She invited Marina to her mother's house, so that Marlina slept on her previous bed at night, and her husband Bernard hadn't even stepped into her mother's house. She went upstairs to see the scene where Marina was picking up the guests, with a look of unbearable and solemnity on her face. At night, she would toss and turn thinking of Marina's words and face. In the end, she also gave a positive answer to her husband's questioning about her affair. At the moment when the truth was revealed, after Marina turned and left, both of them had tears in their eyes.
In silence, the body language of the two is also worth exploring. There was not much physical contact between them, but each time it was heart-pounding. In the hotel room, Marina handed her wine glass to Catherine, showing her desire sullenly; she sat beside Catherine, put her wrist close to Catherine's nose in the name of smelling the fragrance, and closed her eyes to feel the Instant dark surge. On the night of staying at Catherine's mother's house, Catherine naturally took Malina's arm holding a lighter, and Malina was watching her with a deep meaning outside of Catherine's eyes. At the end, Marina stroked Catherine's hair for the first time, put her hand on Catherine's chest, and hugged her.
In the clinic scene, Marina stood sideways by the window with her hands in her pockets, half wanting to hide and waiting for Catherine to appear. She has been carefully observing Catherine's reaction, for fear that she will make Catherine angry as an uninvited guest. She provoked the conversation twice and apologized after failing to adjust the atmosphere, fearing that her desire to meet would cause trouble for Catherine. In many narrations, Marina stood with her back to Catherine, hiding her thoughts and brewing new words. At Catherine's mother's house, Marina asked Catherine if she had ever brought a man home for the night, and if there was anyone who meant a lot to Catherine, she secretly compared herself with the people she had stayed at in the past, and naturally developed a desire Classified as delusional in the category of Catherine's Favorites. Marina rationally understood that this was a delusion, but after hearing Catherine's nostalgia for the person she loved, her chest was still rising and falling, and her eyes showed hopelessness and loneliness. Most of the time, Marina's eyes are cold and mysterious, and only when she is sure that she will not be found, she shows affectionate expressions. On the night after the carnival, Catherine was so drunk that she leaned on the railing by the roadside, and Marina turned back, quietly listening to Catherine's whispers, looking up and down at her with affectionate eyes, and couldn't help but smile.
Marina is not Chloe. She has her own life, her own past, and she has read all the pictures of all beings. What she was after was so out of reach, the most she could do was to lie and see Catherine a few times before the scheduled parting. Katherine isn't the woman in the remake who was struggling with a midlife crisis and lost her confidence. She didn't feel that her charm was exhausted at all, and she still had that confidence and power of control. Regarding the mutual relationship between the two people, different from the Oedipus complex and the possessiveness of the young body interpreted by Igoyan, this film reflects a kind of fit between the two - the fit is boring, the fit is cunning, the fit Reason and restraint. In "Chloe", we clearly feel the urge of young people to give up and the prudent balance of middle-aged people. The two in "Natalie" have equal psychological maturity, and even Marina's heart is even more unfathomable. At the end, after the two embraced, the screen went dark, and when it came on again, Marina was wearing a backless outfit and turned around while smoking a cigarette. It's hard not to let people see a trace of "smoke after the fact", and in the dark picture, what happened between the two? The boring director is reluctant to show it, so we have to imagine it ourselves.
At the end, Katherine reunites with her husband, while Marina is still looking into the distance thoughtfully. What will the story of the future be like? We can make such a bright understanding: the two still live in the same block and share a relationship outside the scam. I believe so much in Marina, I believe that when she set up the deception, she was worried and considered about the future; I believe that she has her own wisdom and can find another and better way to get along with Catherine. No matter how the two choose in the future, I believe that it is the best choice they can make.
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