I don't like this story.
This movie made me notice that the Berlin Film Festival has set up the Teddy Bear Award for Best Picture for LGBTQ films, and then I checked that the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival also have similar Queer Palm and Queer Lion Awards. This can't help but make me feel more and more emotional about the proliferation of political correctness in the film industry in recent years. If this continues, the major film festivals and film awards will also see a wave of "Best Black Lives Matter" and "Asian Anti-Japanese". Best Picture in Discrimination", "Best Picture in Feminism"? This is not to sneer at the need for the rise of LGBTQ affirmative action, but since we are calling for LGBTQs to be treated the same way and have the same rights (and obligations) as heterosexuals, why should we use the guise of "pay more attention"? LGBTQ movies stand out and specialize LGBTQ? Isn't this a blatant double standard and a slap in the face of the original intention of the affirmative movement? Shouldn't LGBTQ movies be classified as romance or drama? I used to be enthusiastic about the LGBTQ affirmative action movement, but then I was indifferent, because I found that many participants had a very serious tendency to symbolize and label the LGBTQ group, and also found that many so-called affirmative action movements eventually evolved into privilege movements. Granted, this seems off-topic.
The rise of LGBTQ affirmative action has also led to the prosperity of LGBTQ films, including many brilliant works, such as "Brokeback Mountain", "Portrait of a Burning Woman", "Single Man", "Lan Yu", not too brilliant but quite bright. , such as "Stay in Time", "Who Falls in Love with Him First". Naturally, there are also many mediocre works: handsome and sexy dual male protagonists + lustful scenes + kissing and caressing scenes have gradually become a fixed pattern, and audiences who have a soft spot for sugar are also ignoring the plot and only care about " It's so sweet!", under the screenshots of the movies that some people coveted, there are always comments like "Husband!", "I can!" and other comments worthy of the chicken coop warning. These have contributed to the mass production of vulgar lust or deliberately packaged to look fresh and beautiful, such as "Call Me by Your Name" and so on.
I saw this still on Reddit earlier, and I was curious about this movie because of the lackluster photography style and the grim face of Josh O'Connor. The interweaving of dark blue and light cyan throughout sets the tone of the whole film, but I can't understand it. In a small stone house with hay, you have to wear sweaters and warm pants, cotton pads, and quilts when sleeping. The two male protagonists can take off their clothes in the middle of the night, caress each other naked and slowly, and even have sex?
The story line is so simple and outrageous that it is nothing more than that the farmer's son fell in love with the new helper. As a result, he was caught stealing food at the bar, and took the bus to confess to the helper. The director seems to focus on depicting the development process of the love between the two, but in this 1/3 of the narrative, the only possible convincing plot is "The son of the farmer who tried to drive away the helper was scratched by a stone but accidentally got it. The care of the helper", but the farmer's son dared to be daring and walked over to the helper and grabbed his genitals when he woke up at night? The helper's initial resistance and the subsequent refusal to touch the backyard with an embarrassed face and a chrysanthemum can't help but make people wonder if he is gay himself, or is it just a mistake and a temporary emergency? If it was the latter, the loving gaze and contentment he immediately had towards the farmer's son upon waking up the next day, as well as the affectionate eyes and gentle and intimate demeanor of a lover since then, would be unreasonable and obviously abrupt. We can notice that the follow-up helpers took the initiative to seduce the farmer's son to have sex and were obviously in an active position during the intercourse (not to mention that the temperature was so low that the little lamb froze to death, the two of them were able to sit without pants and the other naked. bugs chatting on hay). At this point, the film reaches 1/2, but I still can't find the emotional germination point between the two.
The farmer's son has always felt repressed and dissatisfied with the fate of his father's disability, his mother's departure, and he had to work hard, and his incompatibility with his relatives and old friends also made him withdrawn and irritable. I have to pull out some relationship. It can only be said that the helper feels pity and fell in love with this innocent and silly son, and it is rare for a silly son to have someone who cares about himself and can vent his sexual pressure. In turn, he also dispelled the helper body. The loneliness of being in a foreign country? This kind of explanation has the suspicion of "suffering old sorrow for saying new words". If the plot shown by the farmer in the film is barely plausible, the helper side is completely unconvincing: he does not have any sign of loneliness in this film, which makes him lose motivation in this relationship, Even the sex that night was at best explained as he was lonely - in this case, the story fell into a kind of boring situation, even the yellow flowers on the dinner table, or the pasta and goat cheese made by hand, could not help. Take the story out of this boot-tickling predicament - pile up intimate scenes, press the audience's head and say, look, they're in love anyway!
Furthermore, after discovering that the farmer's son was stealing the food, the helper walked back to the farm along the mountain road in a rage and packed up his bed. But the source of his attention is an open mystery. At the same time, the only two supporting characters in this film are a disabled father and an elderly grandmother. The two elderly people obviously have an unacceptable attitude towards gay sons. One has a stroke and the other cried bitterly, but the relationship between the farmer's son and the helper has not been So encounter any obstacles. So far, the film has missed all the opportunities for dramatic conflict and dramatic tension, and I've lost my curiosity about how the story is going.
Is their love tortuous? Not tortuous. The first contact was straight to sexual intercourse, and then the intercourse continued. The only twist comes from stealing food, but it can be resolved with three sentences "I want you back". I was stunned and began to wonder if the previous rage was too exaggerated.
Overall, the story is not only smooth, but also extremely unreasonable, as if it were told by jumping on a straight story line. The film pays homage to "Brokeback Mountain" in many places, not only the character design and story background are similar, but many plots are also highly similar, such as one person burning fire and one person brushing himself, one injured and the other comforting, the long night is long and the two men are lonely and have sex, the farmer finds love from a distance, Jump into the water and play, look at the clothes on the wall and think about people, and so on. But the two patterns are far from each other.
If it weren't for the outstanding performance of the new actor Josh O'Connor, and the full reconciliation + happy ending of the story to satisfy the long-cherished wish about "Brokeback Mountain", this film is only worth two stars. The father's reconciliation was forgivable, and the son took his father into the bathtub, but the moment when the grandmother handed the small piece of paper with the address to the male protagonist was actually quite abrupt and lacking foreshadowing.
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