Although it is classified as "light comedy", I am a little breathless watching it. The drama starts to strain from the moment they walk out of the Paris train station (maybe while they were still traveling in Italy, or while they were still in New York, the nerves had already started), and basically nothing relieved for more than an hour. gap. . . Jack has been shouting headaches in the face of the strange city that belongs to his girlfriend; Marion is swinging excitedly in the love and hatred of his hometown and old people.
This is one of the few films that has made Paris a bit disgusting. . ? At first, I felt sympathy for the male protagonist and felt that he was too pitiful (his experience in Paris resonated with me), so most of the time I was watching Paris with a feeling of disgust.
But at the end of the film, I thought about it, the film over-exaggerated the flaws of Paris (just like I was very resistant to the United States for a long time after watching the crash). Efficiency-prioritized American men who travel for the purpose of taking pictures; individualistic French women who are easily excited and debating (both in need of anger-management therapy)...in a chaotic city. Some critics said it was talking about cultural conflict, and I think cultural conflict here is a consequence, not a cause. In this increasingly fast-paced modern society, people are becoming more and more restless - because people lack the patience to understand (let alone accept) things outside themselves, which has caused so-called culture clashes. After all, the cultural differences between the United States and France are not so exaggerated.
Camera
Marion has a natural eye problem, but has become a professional photographer. The reason is that she was prone to daze when she was a child. I am often attracted by the flowers, plants, insects and birds on the roadside, staring at it non-stop, immersed in my own imaginary world and unable to extricate myself, ignoring the surrounding environment.
So my mother bought her a Polaroid: you can take a picture and look at the picture directly without staring at the little ant. Then she became an action girl who spoke like a beanie.
misunderstanding
Marion felt "so sweet" when Jack confessed to having the virus on his third date with Marion (hence the subsequent conversation about condoms). This little detail is very intriguing:
Americans are used to asking both parties whether they have been checked for STDs at the beginning of a date. You can say that this is a manifestation of responsibility for each other and yourself, but you can’t help but say that Americans are very efficient - no Time is wasted on getting to the bottom of everything, and the bottom line is best figured out in the first place.
Marion, however, misread Jack's confession as the truth. She said at the beginning of the film, "We've been dating for 2 years, and it's a very long relationship these days." At the end of the film, she said, "I can't agree with the attitude of assuming that a person believes a relationship and sticking to it. When I If you feel a problem with your relationship, you will immediately withdraw." Marion is a very self-conscious person, so the relationship is short-lived and irrelevant (continuous friendly relationship with ex-boyfriend). Jack's confession seemed to her to be a private sharing.
And they have been dating for two years, and this misunderstanding has always existed.
Sex
videos talk about sex all the time. Not to show how fiery Paris is, (actually the French I know are less exaggerated), but because sex is our last private realm, and we don't usually talk about our sex lives with new acquaintances. When sex has become a topic of conversation and laughter among people who meet for the first time at parties, one can imagine how anxious this society is.
When Jack was upset that Marion gave the blow job to the "friend" who was "not a boyfriend", Marion hurriedly defended: "We're really nothing. It's not an unforgettable relationship. A blow job is really nothing. The big deal. You know, it was a terrorist attack, and Bush was elected, and what globalization, the greenhouse effect... The blow job really doesn't matter."
Reminds me of someone saying we were in 2008. What happened in 2008? Snow disasters, riots, earthquakes, Olympic Games, economic crisis... One after another explosive news, we are dizzy. It is too late to be happy, too late to be sad, and can only passively receive until numbness. We subconsciously choose apathy in response to the overload of information. And then lose patience, impetuous intolerable.
The film goes to great lengths to express this point of view: in
addition to the narration, the high-decibel and high-speed dialogue
Jack has been filming the camera (Marion: The camera turns you into a bystander, and pulls it out of the scene, superficial. record and lose the sense of being there) a
lot of scenes of talking and running on the street (thus the dialogue becomes short and superficial)
always insinuating the international situation (from terrorist attacks, Bush to Thai child prostitutes)
a few The first fast food restaurant to appear (it's fast food, not a laid-back open-air cafe)
Jack must be
a woman who sits in front of a computer and surfs the Internet easily and loses control (Marion's mother, the wife who was robbed...)
—— Straight through The theme of the whole film: men and women who have been dating for two years, say "love you", but never really know each other.
The first impression is that there are no ups and downs in the film. Jack's headache is the same from beginning to end, and there is no dramatic change from the foreshadowing to the climax.
But then I thought maybe that's what the director wanted. The air is tight and restless, but he can't tell the reason. It's all trivial things that make people shout.
In this anxious age, where can one find a vent to take a breath?
The two negotiate and analyze with high intensity, with their own narrowness. When Marion was preparing to end this relationship according to his usual style, some subtle touches suddenly inspired the two, and they should give each other another chance. To accept a person, a country, a city, one should be patient to fully understand it.
So Jack finally put his camera down and the two danced in a midnight tavern.
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