Many years ago, when online movies were not yet popular, CCTV6's translations used to accompany me through countless weekends, winter vacations, and summer vacations. It is the loneliest time for the only child, when it is either hot or snowy outside. In addition to the routine American films, some non-English films that are relatively niche, make me feel a kind of delicacy in the world.
Among them, Spanish films left a deep impression on me. Don't forget the actors' dark skin, golden beards, and bright, vivid eyes. During that time, I was obsessed with Agatha Christie's detective novels, and I happened to see a Spanish movie "Limited Space". I don't remember the process of solving the puzzle. I couldn't help but marvel at the atmosphere of getting narrower, the mathematicians getting nervous and having to be composed.
Later, I saw an interview with the writer Mai Jia, in which he mentioned the popularity of his works in Spain, and his portrait was also printed on the bus in Spain. It is conceivable that this country has a lot to do with literature, love and appreciation. Suspenseful love, and respect for literature and art and writers.
Therefore, in addition to the warm sunshine, honorable teams and sparkling wine, in addition to cotton and linen, prints and high heels, Spain has one thing that is essential to all mankind, and that is movies, especially suspense movies.
The one that still ranks at the top of my personal Spanish suspense movie list is the 2016 movie "The Invisible Guest" that I have watched more than once. It is still the atmosphere creation that the director of the other country is best at. In addition to the dozens of reversals in "The Invisible Guest", there is another thing that fascinates me: metaphors. Metaphors belong to poetry. In the film, the men and women who secretly meet, on the way through the country road, fatefully bump into a deer, and thus have all the plots that follow. Everything the male protagonist did out of complete self-protection: lying, sinking the car, the film did not give an explanation on the human level, but only gave a deer. It is a living creature and an elves, with evil charm and innocence, jumping over the night of human nature. Both good and bad thoughts have no source and no explanation.
Coincidentally, there is also a deer in Almodóvar's Julieta, and the deer here doesn't even play a role in the plot. Totally another metaphor. After the deer appeared, Julieta met Su An, gave birth to Antya, and had a later life and everything later. Why is there love? Why did Su An die? Antija's departure? The movie also doesn't explain, just gives the deer. Driven by the deer, the train stops, Julieta falls in love with the stranger, Suan falls in love and leaves. In the years when Antia was gone, Julieta wrote and received letters; bought cakes, threw them away; decorated and moved. While watching this movie, it dawned on me that it was purely a story about the lives of women and girls, only to find out later that the movie was adapted from Monroe's short story series: Chance, Rush, Silence. Monroe's "Juliet" is Almodovar's Juliet Tower.
Juliet, a 20-year-old girl from a small town, took the train to the township to teach. When a strange man fell on the rails and committed suicide, she met Eric, a fisherman, and fell in love. A few months later, after receiving a letter from Eric, Juliet went to Walvis Bay alone to pursue her love; 30-year-old Juliet brought her one-year-old daughter Penelope home to visit relatives, her mother Sarah was very ill, and her father coached for 30 years. Years later, he suddenly resigned and started a vegetable business. The housework fell to Irene, a very unfriendly servant. However, in a place where my mother could not see, my father and Irene had a secret relationship. In the sense that things are right and wrong, the whole family will also fall apart. 60-year-old Juliet, her daughter gradually faded out of her mother's life and cut off contact without saying goodbye after living with her for 20 years. The reason for Penelope's departure is elusive, and it continues to torture Juliet, who finally accepts the fate of celibacy.
Different from the ambiguous manifestation of the sins of human nature by the deer in "The Invisible Guest", here, the deer is more like the reason for everyone to leave. The metaphor of a deer galloping over the railroad tracks cuts through Julieta's life. The relationship between women and life is like the beach and the tide. The people and things they experience come and go, and they all come to nothing in the end. As the bearer and giver of emotions, nature chooses a woman to be the outlet and ending of all stories. She first seems to have everything: husband, daughter, husband's lover, father's lover, daughter's friend... and then loses everything : Mother, father, husband, daughter... She moved from one city to another, like a tired bird trying to move in different nests, but she herself has become an old nest, Su An is gone, so is her daughter . Cleverly, when she was young, she deserted her parents and eloped with fishermen and went to the unknown ocean, but when she was old, her daughter did the same thing as her. When she returned to her parents' house, her dying mother was locked in the room by her father's lover. This kind of imprisonment was also abandonment. They, three generations of women, from voluntarily fleeing to being abandoned, their lives turned thousands of times. In the end, he was alone. This seems to indicate that although women run away like deer, the end point is the place of departure, and life is a nameless closed loop. No matter how much you run, you can't deviate from the doomed track.
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