After watching the whole film, I finally couldn't help crying: People educated at boarding schools are FUCKING CRAZY!!
Of course, this is a bit of a map shot. After all, any literary and film works that describe adolescence prefer to let some problem boys and girls do it. protagonist. But the psychological problems boarding schools have brought to a large number of students are real. British education and boarding schools can be said to have the closest connection. Upper-class families routinely send their children to expensive boarding schools, but there is such a part of this group of children who have the best conditions and receive the most elite education However, because of long-term distance from parents and family in childhood and adolescence, depression in school, etc., some psychological problems have developed to some extent.
Most of the reviews of this film are expected to discuss Mona. After all, both the original novel and the movie are told from her perspective. Her chaotic youth, her hopeless life at the bottom, and the girl she met on horseback, she opened up Heart, she fell in love, she was deceived, she left, she grew up. Too many people will also resonate with her psychology, after all, this is the purpose of the director. ("I need to get to the essence of adolescence, in a way I am arrested in my adolescent emotions, like most of us I think are, so the film is very personal. I identify with Mona to an unhealthy degree, so the main thing was to make these teenagers the sort of teenagers I could relate to myself, slightly more timeless and removed from now.")
In my case, probably because I had that in mind from the beginning, the whole viewing process was A lot of attention has been paid to Tamsin, a brown-haired girl from the upper class who lives in a big house and can play the violin. How indifferent! Mona gave all her heart, but she was regarded as summer theatrics, just a summer game. She has a superior family background and an empty spiritual world. It seems like a perfect family, but in fact there is a lack of communication and understanding between the family members. Everyone plays the role they should play and is silent in tacit understanding. Mona saw their family eating out of the window, her father was reading the newspaper, her mother and her were eating the food in front of them with their heads down The typical upper-class family, however, may have long been broken inside.
I think Tam is also dissatisfied with her parents, dissatisfied that they did not give her enough love and attention, but she still obediently silent in front of them, never talking to them about her inner thoughts. If she were a child in an American teen movie, she might be screaming at her parents to vent and be madly rebellious. But she is not, she has been educated and used to modeling such a docile and good child. Mona saw Tam's father driving by and asked him where Tam was, and he said, "In her room, as usual." Mona went to her with her suitcase, and saw her in her school uniform with her head bowed slightly, very well-behaved Like a good daughter, he said, "I'm going back to school."
Later, Tam found Mona by the water where they were kissing for the first time, and said to her calmly, "I didn't show my true self in front of my mother just now. My self, I'm just acting, that's not me at all, you know me." As she repeats "You know me," the camera meaningfully gives a large close-up of Mona's face, taking up the entire screen. Does Mona know her, or does she know herself? Which is the real her? In reality, she was trapped in her own superior life, trapped in a closed boarding school, and played the role of a well-behaved girl all the year round. She finally had a vacation from her calm, empty and boring life and began to realize the idea in her heart. of summer fun, she set herself up to be the "real self" she always imagined, smoking, drinking, crying and dancing. She tried her best to do the opposite of the rules and regulations in closed schools. To get more experience in the outside world, she ran with Mona smashing the car window, asking Mona to tell her about her ex-boyfriend Ricky and show her the process of making love. Go messing around at Ricky's house together, eat hallucinogenic mushrooms, make out in bars openly, toy with Mona and her brother to get satisfaction from their reactions, feel that this one is so real, and then she put all her expressions away and said, "I want Back to school."
this home. The perfect bourgeois family. The surface is shiny, the inside is roughly broken. It's flashy, like the big house that's splendid but makes a scary noise at night. While she hated her parents who were acting numbly day in and day out in her eyes, she was more or less the same as her parents. She hated people like that, and she became that person again. She did these things, made up these stories, played with other people's feelings, made this so-called "true self" especially real, and then when she finally returned to her backwater life and continued acting, she could tell herself with particular confidence "I'm just pretending now that this isn't the real me at all, that's who I am."
This movie is easily reminiscent of "Angel of Sin". Adolescent girls whose lives are depressing and depressed hold each other like a life-saving straw. Friendship and love are mixed together, and they vow never to separate. But I want to escape too much, escape from the false reality, escape from the miserable life, escape from the foreseeable future, escape from the work in the slaughterhouse and the jerk husband and a group of children with mental illness, so I fantasize about a beautiful and hopeful s future. Just like an older brother who fell into religious fanaticism in search of spiritual solace, he was convinced that the other party was his only salvation. The oath by the bonfire, too innocent and too young, "just like the beautiful rumors that were hurriedly carved together forever", the moment it was said, it was doomed.
In fact, they won't have a future anyway. If Tam is really crazy about love and decides to run away with her regardless, what will the ending be? The scene on the second morning of the movie, where Tam lays on the spot, Mona goes and picks some blackcurrants for breakfast, says she has more in her pocket, Tam says no matter how much she picks, it's not enough for breakfast, she hates this place , cold and hungry and bitten by mosquitoes, want to go home. After returning home, Mona was still enthusiastically holding a globe to choose where they eloped, determined to leave and go to love, silly girl! If you really eloped, that morning in the wild is the epitome of the future. If you don't have enough food and clothing, there will be a day when she will say to you again, "I'm tired, I want to go home."
If the movie was a little more warm and normal, it would probably be that Tam also really loved her and didn't deliberately deceive her for his idea of summer fun. She'll tell her, "I love you. But I can't leave everything behind and go with you. It's not realistic. I'm going back to school, and you've filled a part of my heart and I'll be a better person, I hope you That's right." This will be the trend of most youth films, you meet a person, she inadvertently breaks in but leaves vigorously, you will not have a future or wear and tear, love will always stay in this moment, forever young. For example, the literature and art of "Summer of Sangeli" are small and fresh, the girl is healed, she makes you a better person, and then waves goodbye to you. No result is the meaning of youth.
But "Summer of Love" didn't give us such a small fresh ending. In fact, if the film had not been adapted from a novel, it might have ended like this, but the female British writer who wrote the original spent a lot of space describing the social class background of the 1980s in Britain (the director made a lot of cuts, focusing on in the relationship between the two girls), in this context Tam grows into such a person, an upper-class girl with unhealthy psychological development. Because of this, it would be too aggrieved if this film was only classified as a "lesbian film", because it is not only that. Like "Angel of Sin", "Crack" and other movies, it contains the feelings between girls and girls, but it is not the absolute focus, more important is other things that are explored from their relationship, the psychological thoughts of adolescence , social systems, growing up, facing the real world, etc.
At the end of the film, Mona grows up, not in the usual youthful freshness, but in a relatively cruel way. This girl at the bottom of the society who lost herself, after seeing the reality, no longer yearns for the other party to save her like grabbing a life-saving straw. The moment she let go, the person she loved in her heart was already dead. Crimes of passion may be forgiven, but she let go of the other party and herself, after all, her vows are sincere. At the beginning of the movie, after she was dumped by her ex-boyfriend, she was only confused and numb, but when she let go of Tam and left without turning her head, she was smiling. She jumped out of the false spiritual world and came to reality, clearly understanding that there is no god in this world. It's only you, and the only one who can save you is you.
As for Tamsin, can she get out of her false spiritual world and bring salvation to herself?
We don't know.
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