After watching this film, I was a little stunned, as if I understood it but I didn't understand it. After reading a few film reviews, I gradually sorted out my thoughts.
In terms of rating, I can give 8 points, because the concept and cast of this film are very good.
The whole film is advanced through dialogue. If you don't calm down, you may not be able to watch it, and the tone of the whole movie is still a bit depressing. Because this is a story about middle-aged women going downhill. It's a story about both you and me.
The background of this film is also very interesting. The director Assayas and the heroine Juliette Binoche once collaborated on a "Love in Paris" in 1985. This film has also made the heroine famous since then. And decades later, they worked together again. Juliet of the year has become a famous international actress, but at the same time, she has ushered in the age of beauty. This is very close to the story of the film. You can also see the profound intentions of Assayas.
The story of the movie is actually not complicated. It is a 40-year-old international movie star Maria who encountered a low point in her life, her marriage was broken, and her teacher passed away. From the shaking train scene at the beginning, it can be seen that the life behind the bright and bright international movie star is not satisfactory. While attending her teacher's funeral, a director invited her to appear in a "Snake of Maria" work. The work is a novel by her mentor, and Maria had made a name for herself 20 years earlier with her role as the young and charismatic Sigrid in this film. 20 years later, in the same play, Maria plays another protagonist, Helena, a middle-aged woman who is not very good and even chooses to commit suicide when she is unable to love.
The film revolves around Maria's refusal to accept the role of Helena and the reality behind this role.
The film uses a lot of metaphors. If you don't read it carefully or don't understand the background of the story, you may not get its point.
There are three important female characters in the show.
Maria, the centerpiece of the show and the epitome of middle-aged women. She is an international movie star, but the director did not portray her as high and unreachable. On the contrary, she may be more like a middle-aged woman that we can see in our ordinary daily life. A character who has a wealth of life experience but is also apprehensive in the face of the new era. The director seems to be telling us that no matter how brilliant people once were, they are still the same fear in the face of aging.
She was initially reluctant to accept the role of Helena because she thought she was weak, pathetic, and unattractive. What scares her even more is that she is Henlena herself, falling in love with her former self, sigrid, but she can't catch her. Because time will pass, the young and attractive Sigrid will not stay deep in her forever. She was crazy, but in the process of going crazy, she had to accept the fact that she was old.
Valentine, she is Maria's assistant, helping Maria with all kinds of trivial matters, and Valentine persuaded Maria to accept the script. She is young and beautiful, dressed casually and a little sloppy, and like all of us, loves to gossip and follow the most popular stars on the Internet. As an assistant to an international movie star, her business ability is not too strong. From a few scenes on the train, it can be seen that she is still not skilled enough to handle trivial matters. At work, she will not stand in Maria's point of view to help her screen work.
In the film, she actually represents sigrid in Maria's own heart. She rehearsed with Maria in the Swiss countryside and played sigrid. In many scenes, we even blurred whether their dialogue was rehearsed or real. They went their separate ways from the beginning of the year-end relationship to the final parting, which actually implied that Maria accepted that she had grown old and became Henlena. She is the assistant in reality and Maria's own sigrid. The new assistants hired by Maria later looked very mature and stable, and their business capabilities were much stronger than Valentine's.
And finally Jo Ann, the sigrid of the outside world. Not many shots can show that she is young and attractive, rebellious and scandalous, and a popular movie star can attract countless audiences. A clip of Jo Ann intervening in other people's marriages as a third party was added to the film, which is considered to be kind to Maria. At least this outside sigrid is not without flaws.
At the end of the film, a new director finds Maria, wanting him to star in his new play, and even gives the answer out of time.
The film uses a lot of space to describe Maria's embarrassment and her accepting the pain of her own aging. So the whole tone is a little heavy. The final out of time is simply taken.
Honestly I can't quite empathize with this movie, but at 26 I still have age issues. Because something needs to be done urgently and you can't keep up with your age. Over time, I haven't grown to the point of being great.
Even if aging is inevitable, please believe that something must be out of time, it may be your hard work, it may be your talent, or it may be anything else you love. No matter how reluctant we are to admit it, we are all going to age. So, let's walk this downhill gracefully.
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