From the overall narrative, the script is very successful. The story switches between the three main female characters, and the timeline also jumps between the present and the past. In order to let the audience gradually enter the situation, the opening rhythm is relatively slow, and the inner monologue and the character confession understate the outline of the main character. With the development of the story, the narrative rhythm gradually accelerates, and the cohesion of the shots and the cooperation of the background music gradually create an increasingly urgent atmosphere. Although the overall style of less dialogue and rich inner drama is commonly used in literary and artistic films, the suspense is controlled just right, and coupled with the sudden turn of the plot later, the audience's attention is basically firmly grasped.
To say that it is a female film, I probably considered several aspects. First, the whole story is intertwined with the stories of the three women. The woman is the core of the play, and the heroine of the film is depicted with a lot of subjective shots. R is the girl on the train. She takes the train back and forth for several hours every day. When passing a certain station on the way, she will carefully look at a house on the roadside and the woman who lives there. Through R's eyes, the audience knew this woman M? from the perspective of an onlooker. In a very long paragraph at the beginning, the close-up of R's face when observing M and the shot depicting M from the perspective of R through the train glass have a strong sense of dialogue, making the audience feel that there is a presence between two women who are strange to each other. The connection and confrontation. In the development and climax of the following story, there are many subjective shots like this, and they are not only functional subjective shots used to explain the spatial relationship between characters and scenes, but more to portray characters. For example, a lot of shaking or moving follow-up shots are connected to the first-view image to show R's panic, drunkenness, anger and other emotions. At the same time, a large number of close-up shots provide ample space for the development of the characters. It can be said that this is a drama that deeply portrays women.
Second, the whole film actually explores three important issues in a woman's life through the stories of three women: the woman is the mother, the relationship between the woman and the man, and the relationship between the woman and herself. Although this is a suspenseful crime work, the director spent a lot of lens language to portray the plight of the three women in their lives. It goes far beyond just linking the three characters to complete a murder case. The plight of these three women in life can be regarded as the plight of a representative woman. The man and the child connected these three women together, but the movie did not become a story of a fierce fight between women, nor did it even become a story of a woman who sees through the truth and finally the sisters join forces to fight the world. But these three female characters have changed in the course of the development of the story, from being muddy and having no self to suddenly waking up to find themselves, from the bird in the cage trembling to finally venting their anger with violence, and gradually finding forgiveness from self-denial and self-flagellation. The courage to start again. The plight of the three women, their respective struggles or transformations, and the thinking about "being a woman" they bring to the audience is the humanistic care implicit in this murder mystery story, and it is also the "female" of this movie. Place.
Third, the most valuable thing about this movie is that it is not pretentious and bravely shatters all romantic fantasies. All three women failed. One started to drink alcohol because of her inability to get pregnant and was abandoned by her ex-husband; the other was doing work that could not reflect her value every day and was used by men as a tool for venting; the other was living a tedious life as a housewife , The husband is unfaithful to himself. The ending of the movie is very comforting. The heroine R puts on brightly colored clothes for the first time. She looks much neater and more beautiful when she is no longer drinking. However, Rachel did not regain everything she was robbed of like in the romantic story, because in reality it can only be turned over the page and restarted. In the end, she did not become a tragic heroine, but finally learned to live in peace with herself.
To be honest, a Hollywood movie can combine mature suspense crime genre films with female themes so well. Of course, the original work is indispensable, but the more important director is full of tension and expressive lens language. In a word, this is a rare female film masterpiece.
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