This is a film about loneliness, company, friendship, summer, reading and music.
【Plot】
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The opening of the movie, the director uses a parallel narrative The footage begins to tell the life of the two protagonists. Like waking up alone on a sunny morning, like a neglected role in family and love, like walking alone on the streets of New York, lacking partners and belonging. Two seemingly different beings, but in the busy and lively city of New York, they are like two parallel lines, escaping the same lonely trajectory. Until one day, she threw her boyfriend's guitar out the window, everything began to change, the two parallel lines finally intersected, and the lives of both parties began to undergo subtle changes.
The first time they met, she sat in the auditorium with only her and listened to his cello. At this time, the only background music in the whole film sounded, and the sad tune touched her and touched the hearts of every audience member. On the way home together for the first time, he told her that art was dead.
In a palace-like house, teenagers are used to practicing cello in indoor swimming pools without water. He told the girl that he couldn't swim. she asked why. He said it was because no one taught it. She smiled and told him that she would teach him.
The maid prepares dinner and prepares to leave the restaurant to eat in the back kitchen. The girl was puzzled and thought that the maid should dine with them. The teenager told her that the maid likes to eat by herself in the back kitchen and do what she likes in her own space. He also told her that her seemingly righteous thoughts were in fact subjective assumptions about the maid's way of life, a hypocritical moral kidnapping.
After the boy's cello performance, she and him celebrated by eating ice cream in the restaurant, and he asked her family status like a little adult. The older brother was on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and the younger sister was working an "inappropriate" bar job in her hometown. As for parents, the topic melted in ice cream and didn't unfold.
Exams are over and summer is here. His only relative in the palace, his mother, flew to distant Beijing to accompany her husband, who was arranged to attend a summer camp. He bribed the camp director with a check, escaping what he described as a formalized teenage friendship. In the restaurant conversation that followed, he described his life as an eerie island that nobody cared about, and he was the only islander struggling to find safety. Only now, he brought her into this isolated island. (This is my life. Welcome to the weirdness.)
On the night of eating popcorn and watching a comedy movie on the couch, she got a call from her ex-boyfriend. He follows her to the door, sees her hysterical confrontation with her ex-boyfriend, and back home, she apologizes to him for being the worst babysitter for bringing too much of her personal life into his world. However, he didn't care, because their relationship was not caring and being cared for from the beginning, but mutual understanding and healing in sharing.
In the gallery, he and her watched a painting of a half-naked young woman. He told her it was the work of an Italian painter named Modigliani. Then he told her the story of the painter's tragic life, like a veteran art historian. She marveled at his age-defying erudition. He is very proud, and attributes his wisdom genes to his deceased father. For the first time, he talked about his childhood and his parents, saying that he idealized his deceased father as a mythical, omnipotent role model, so that a broken place in his heart would feel better.
The food that the temporary substitute maid cooked was hard to swallow, so she improvised and took him on the New York subway, across most of the city, to eat Chinese restaurants full of MSG. During the dinner, her mobile phone was still chattering, and her past life did not seem to end with the death sentence she pronounced. He suggested that violence should be overcome by violence, and in addition to her surprise and denial, she seemed to have experienced a little insecure feeling of being "covered" after a long time.
Long indoor reading bored her, and she pulled him to the sunny park. A conversation about friendship on the bench, she encouraged him to open up and make more friends. When the kid playing basketball behind him invited him to play ball together, he still chose to be alone as always. The person he is willing to accept as a friend seems to be the only one in front of him for the time being.
One day the girl's cell phone rang again, but this time it wasn't the entanglement of her ex-boyfriend, but the news about her father's serious illness. She packed her luggage and was going to go back to see her father. Seeing her panic, he proposed to accompany her back.
In the hotel room in the girl's hometown, the first thing the boy checked in the hotel service introduction was the swimming pool. He must remember her promise to teach him how to swim. Before turning off the lights, the girl told the boy a story about her. Playing the cornet at an important ceremony attended by Hillary Clinton, the fulfillment and shattering of Juilliard's dreams, the buskering show in the subway, and the encounter with an ex-boyfriend. Sadness at the end of the story flooded the girl's heart. The boy said softly, "Well, good night." The
next day, the girl saw her seriously ill father in the hospital. Although he was full of tubes, he just lay there peacefully, even with the arrival of his daughter. Can't even notice. After leaving the hospital, the girl sat in the front seat of the car with tears in her eyes, and the co-pilot, who was beside her, quietly accompanied her sadly.
On the bus back to New York, the girl and the boy talked about the future. The girl wanted to go to the ski resort in Iowa to join her friends. The boy mentioned the cornet, which may have been forgotten by the girl for a long time. He encouraged the girl to re-pursue her original music dream. The conditions and the juvenile promise.
After returning to New York, the two went to the park for the last time. They were lying on the grass, chatting casually, and the sadness of parting had spread to their hearts.
On the day of the farewell, the girl brought a new babysitter to take over her job, and the next day the girl was about to finish the job and start a new plan and journey. In the early morning, in front of the window with the white curtains swaying in the breeze, the girl was a little sad, maybe she had experienced too much in the six weeks of getting along. At the moment of farewell, the teenager said that the short time together seemed to be a lifetime of familiarity. He had another lifetime to share with her, so he had to put it all away at this moment, hoping that she would understand when we meet again in the future. She gave him a light kiss, touched his head and said, "be a good boy".
In the final scene, the girl returns to her hometown where she swore not to go back not long ago, and finds the cornet he sent her on the porch. The black leather cornet case was tied with a red butterfly ribbon, just like the one her dad had given the girl when she graduated from high school. At this time, the boy started to play his composition "Like Sunday, Like Rain" at the bottom of the swimming pool without water, and the girl who received the cornet sheet music finally picked up the cornet again and started to play the same melody.
【Evaluation】
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This is a simple A story about loneliness, company, friendship, summer, reading and music. It lacks Hollywood-style surprise climaxes or unexpected plot twists, it simply records this encounter and parting of a girl and a teenager.
The author read an interview report by Frank Weili, the director and screenwriter of the film, on the Internet. Power director said that the script for the film was completed in 2008, and he has been busy with preparations for four or five years since then, including finding investors for the film. At first, things didn't go well. No one wanted to invest in such a bland film. Someone suggested that the director change the script to add some drama, and the director did. For example, the ex-boyfriend's role was added at the end, and he was brought out to kill all the characters with a gun. The director showed the revised script to his wife, who knew that the other party immediately threw the script into the trash after reading it. Her wife said that the revised script had changed beyond recognition and was no longer the previous story. The script, should have changed the title "Like Sunday, Like Rain" and renamed it. Fortunately, the director finally found an investor who was willing to invest in the original script, and made the masterpiece we see today. I can't imagine that if the director hadn't found the current investor, he had to abandon the gentle story we see today and shoot a cliche with ups and downs under the poetic title "Like Sunday, Like Rain" , what a pity it would be.
According to the director's recollection, the filming time of the film was only 20 days, and the budget was also pitiful. He even required that the number of NGs for each film should not exceed 4 times to save costs. Perhaps it is these seemingly unfavorable factors that make the whole film look smooth and unpretentious. There is a scene where a girl and a teenager are talking in the subway. It is said that any form of filming is strictly prohibited in the New York subway. Once violated, they will suffer high fines. In order to shoot, the director team streamlined the equipment, smuggled into the subway, and filmed when there were few people, and there was no clear start and end when shooting, so that short performance was actually the real interaction between the two actors ( The director also mentioned in the interview that Meester and Julian hit it off and became very good friends in private).
It was also written in the report that the inspiration for this story came from the director’s own experience. Once, when he was walking in New York, he ran into a friend from many years ago. The friendship at that time seemed accidental and hastily, but in fact, it was very important to the director later. had a great positive impact on his life. The director wants to bring such New York-style encounters and friendships to the screen, to show the preciousness of such emotions, and to explore how a person's long-term life will be transformed and affected after such friendships end. I think the director has achieved this. "Like Sunday, Like Rain" presents a beautiful relationship very well, no matter whether you think this relationship is friendship or light love, the hero and heroine are in this relationship. There are extraordinary gains, and the end of the movie seems to push this feeling to a climax. If there is a person who can help you find your passion and dreams in life, he/she must be a person worth cherishing for a lifetime.
【Actors and Casting】
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At the beginning of writing the script, the director's biggest worry was not finding an investor, but the casting of the young protagonist Reggie. Many colleagues who have read the director's script believe that it is impossible for him to find an actor who can play this role. After a long period of screening, this young man named Julian finally entered the casting director's attention. After watching his audition video, the director himself identified this handsome boy as Reggie in his own writing. Just like Reggie's description of himself in the movie, this little actor showed Reggie's "alert, extroverted, affable, articulate and not to mention devilishly handsome" vividly, and every pore revealed a noble temperament. I haven't found the detailed information of this young actor on the Internet. It is amazing that a child of his age has such a temperament and acting skills. I look forward to other works by Xiao Zhengtai in the future.
The other protagonist, Eleanor, is played by Leighton Meester. Ah, the goddess is the goddess, from the hair to the toes! Thinking of chasing Gossip Girl in college, I lost interest in the plot in the later period, but I still relied on Queen B's beauty to support the last season. Meester played Blair for five years, and many people (including me) have fixed her impression of her in that role. After "Gossip Girl", Meester has also acted in some movies, among which I have seen "Roommate", and I feel that it is not a breakthrough. This time, Meester's performance in "Like Sunday, Like Rain" is remarkable, beautiful, and has acting skills. I especially liked the few scenes in which she was on the phone. It felt like she played both herself and the characters on the other end of the phone by herself.
In addition to the hero and heroine, I also want to mention Debra Messing who plays Reggie's cold-blooded lady's mother. People who have watched the American drama "Will & Grace" must be familiar with her. Like Meester, she also faces the challenge of role transformation. She played Grace for eight seasons, and the audience's impression of her role solidification is probably more serious than that of Meester. However, Debra Messing is a full-fledged acting school, so the cold blood bitch image this time is not difficult for her. The gestures, the arrogance and the indomitable words between the words make people hate it.
【Postscript】
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Movie Reggie's lines are really wonderful! I can't wait to take it all down. There was a scene where Reggie was in a literature class at school. He held a book and recited a short piece of John Keats' poem "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art". look at him), fascinated the female professor who is over fifty years old, and must have fascinated the female audience in front of the computer! Post this little poem in the postscript, the gentle feeling goes well with the movie!
“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”
BY JOHN KEATS
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
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