Old-fashioned but true small-town stories
"Misunderstood" tells a somewhat ordinary or even old-fashioned story. Ellie, an Asian girl who lives with her father in a closed town, and Paul, a boy on the football team who always sits on the bench - one is not in school. What friends, the ethnic minorities who still write homework for their classmates from time to time to make money to subsidize their families, one is a sincere and a bit stupid, full of insensitivity to the world, but also has some small dreams and is not a popular local. Paul found Ellie to write a love letter because he wanted to pursue Aster, the most popular girl in the school. In the back and forth of letters and text messages, Ellie gradually began to have a heart for Aster.
The structure of the story is simple, and the character setting is even a bit stereotyped. Like the boys and girls and plots that appear in every youth film, this film is not different from other youth films because of the "girl crushes on a girl" episode. , after all teenage stories are mostly similar. Even in the opinion of some viewers, there are many stereotypes and unreasonable flaws in "Half Understanding". For example, highly educated Asian fathers are unlikely to find public positions such as railway stationmasters, and Asians do homework and work on behalf of others. The taciturn image quality has been somewhat solidified in European and American film and television. However, from the perspective of the second-generation American immigrant Wu Siwei, the director and screenwriter, such a setting may not be inconsistent with her understanding of Asian-American classmates during her adolescence.
As the director of the film "Face" about Chinese lesbians coming out of the closet, most of Wu Siwei's films originate from her real personal experience, which is why "Half Understanding" has many small details worthy of criticism, but for the The psychology and behavior of girls who like the same sex are very detailed. However, the value of this film may not entirely lie in the enlightenment and discussion of sexual orientation, but more as a small town story, the difficult but great growth of young people in every small town when faced with future choices. .
The goddess is just an image beyond small town life
It is not so much that Ellie and Paul secretly love and long for Aster, the campus goddess, but it is the image represented by the girl that they yearn for. Ellie fell into love step by step because she found in the dull and flat life that there are people in this world who care about the same books and philosophy as herself, and what Aster attracted to Paul is a representative of "outside the small town". Glitter image.
During Ellie's conversations with the goddess again and again, she found that she could escape the daily life of seeing the head at a glance. In the colorful adolescence when no one cared about thinking and was dominated by hormones, it turned out that someone was thinking with him. With the same problem, there are people who want to find out who they are and where they are going. Ellie and Aster are like two pearls meeting in the gravel, and they recognize each other's light at a glance.
As the daughter of a clergyman, Aster has strict family education and discipline; but at the same time, she is an alien ethnicity with a beauty that no one in the town knows about. This holy and mysterious image just aroused the throbbing in Paul's heart, who was born in a chaotic big family and was trying to make a little change for his unchanging life. His love may not be as deep as Ellie's, and it's very likely that he doesn't even realize the inner reason. Paul is a simple and a bit clumsy person, and his greatest hope in life is to change the menu of the family restaurant. It is for this reason that Aster's identity and beauty beyond the town level have also become the main reasons for attracting Paul.
In this story, it doesn't even matter who the goddess is. What matters is that Ellie and Paul, as another possible young man in a small town imagining life, happened to meet during adolescence undergoing a huge psychological transformation. To each other, to meet Aster; the important thing is that the three people firmly grasped each other in this huge emotional vortex, confirming that there is indeed a chance to have another life in this world.
find one's own half
Unlike previous LGBT-themed films, in the context of the 21st century, self-identity is not even that important. The film has very little focus on Ellie's identity and the reactions of onlookers. I think this is also the future development trend of this type of film - to make LGBT everyday, and focus more on the protagonists as growing people's love and life experience and perception.
After weakening the labels of gender and sexual orientation, the story is more like an ordinary growth story that happens among middle school students in a small town. As I grew up in a small city, I always understand Ellie a little better. When all the classmates around you are worried about the exam and thinking about the party, how lucky you are to have someone accompany you to read "The End of the Day". The first emergence of this kind of love is the same joy as seeing another part of one's soul in this world, and it is also another confirmation of oneself-people still need to rely on the fact that "I am not alone" in the end, To dispel some doubts about your place in the world.
But at the same time, this is also a story about friendship. Paul and Ellie are both unpopular and often overlooked people in school. In this little secret love, the two act as friends to accompany and comfort each other. Even more than the meaning of secret love itself.
bold stroke
If the bold stroke of the two heroines is to cut off the life they can see at a glance and go to the liberal arts college and art college - this plot is also very similar to Wu Siwei herself after working as a Microsoft engineer for several years. Going to study movies, and Paul's bold strokes may be bravely chasing Aster who is far out of his league, maybe finally trying to make sausage taco, and maybe even tentatively kissing his good friend Ellie. For Paul, who grew up a little clumsy, a little more love and more decisions he would never have made was a bold stroke in a boring life.
The most touching thing is the ending where the three of them parted ways. The brave girls chose to travel far without being trapped by the life trajectory defined by the small town. As director Wu Siwei said, this film is also her own story, and she wrote this story to commemorate her friendship with a male friend. So in the end, whether someone can really be with the goddess is not important in this story at all. Everyone has found a way to express, and these feelings will always be remembered in the figure of Paul chasing the train, and even more so in the movie "Half Understanding".
Again, no one can avoid heartbreak, but heartbreak makes us feel alive.
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