If it wasn't for Anaïs, played by Maria de Medeiros, I would have given the film a maximum of two stars; without Uma Thurman's June, it wouldn't have a single star left. The following analysis is dedicated to these two loveliest beauties.
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My first impression of the film was a European interpretation of war and sex... quite European, too European...literary, Lawrence. Maria de Medeiros looks like a Japanese woman, but is actually from Portugal. The film is set in Paris. It talks about the relationship between the sexes, but that is a pretense, the essence of which is the mutual admiration of women. Women look back at themselves in relationships.
Everyone in this movie is not afraid (even deliberately doing) a lot of inelegant little things. The banker Hugo looks like a high school student, Anaïs speaks sharp and straightforward, Henry removes all the custard skin with one knife, flicks cockroaches off the manuscript paper, and pulls a bunch of flowers from the place where the flowers are planted by the window. Flowers for Anaïs' janitor. The only well-dressed old woman in the brothel bar hooked her fingers at the couple. Henry was happy to get a bike from Hugo; couples who were no longer young were riding their bikes in the mud in the woods, faster than anyone else. The tones are a bit outdated, mainly red and gray, and there are no bright colors. Only Anaïs's slender, graceful neck seems to hold the keynote of the film firmly: fanatical, elegant, naive and passionate, with a sense of peculiar demand. Partly is precisely because of details like this that I feel "too European" and this is by no means an American story.
The woman is still the woman in the relationship, and the other woman pretends to be the man; this is also an image that the film recreates over and over again. The first time I saw June (Uma) Anaïs pretended to be June with her husband at night, but in fact she just wanted to reproduce and watch her own passion through her husband's passion for Uma; Anaïs and June's scenes in the tavern were the point; Anaïs Watching "Women, and 'Girls Pretending to Men'" with the Hugos at Henry's frequented places is another re-enactment of the theme.
The most important thing is the image of "seeing". In addition to Anaïs and Hugo themselves as spectators and imitators of Henry and June, a great deal of space is devoted to Anaïs' "gazing" in the film. The wallet thief realizes her gaze and becomes a dove for her; watching the relationship between the two women end, Annie dancing in Hugo's arms, her gaze to the people around her and her consciousness of the person being watched are also gained repeated emphasis. Throughout the film I was repeatedly reminded of Annie's big eyes and slender, dark liner. The "gazing" itself—and the half-covered, half-faced, undisguised gaze in Hugo's shadow itself corresponds to Anne's image as a "writer." Henry and Anne's love is yet another reinforcement of this watcher status; the only quarrel between the two is over mutual literary criticism and the right to write Joan's book.
The entire film is full of elegant, recurring imagery in different themes and settings throughout the development of the plot, and this symmetry is also reflected in the character settings: Henry and June are watched, Annie and Hugo are watching ; moderate Henry and Annie are writers, June, who represents lies, beauty and wildness, is writing, and banker Hugo is (very ironically) the most capable but unbeautiful ordinary person. On the soundtrack, the classic drum imagery that accompanies every sex. These make for an elegant symmetry and looping throughout the film; it's a well-proportioned and beautiful film.
But this movie is more than that. It actually makes a mockery of this structure -- this perfect performance. I don't know if it's because of the casting, the men in the movie are just so unattractive, in contrast to the attractiveness of the women (including the supporting cast). Henry was bare and bald and always wore a hat; Hugo was completely unreasonable and far from being handsome; Aguido and Annie sat far away after the incident, and when Annie wept, he calmly persuaded him A word of inappropriate pleasure can do damage. Henry's story is so feeble that even if it's about Joan, there's "not a single word of truth"; Joan is the only character in the entire film that fits Annie's vibe. Annie was just an imaginative Portuguese woman with an elegant demeanor and a heavy slur in English. "Symmetry," "structure," all Greek fantasies that live only in Anne's diary are not true.
I strongly suspect that Quentin watched the movie, Pulp Fiction is in a sense a post-quench to the relationship between the two heroines, and their relationship in that movie also has a wonderful counterpart.
It is also a movie in the 1990s. Unlike this film, Quentin's shooting is quite gorgeous and modern, and the technique is quite classic, but this film will always make people feel a little strange and a little old, like a pair of pairs hidden in the dust of an old dance studio. Eye.
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After watching the whole film I want to overturn all the opinions above. The film ends with cheating and stealing. June says that Anaïs and Henry "stole everything", they are a kind of people, smart and cunning, and June wants not worship but understanding. As a cold, smart writer, they stole everything from her passion just for the "experience". She was absolutely right. Anaïs and Henry are just two shameless villains, ghosts of sophists who walk among the crowd.
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