With the flashy music that symbolizes the bar girl, the opening credits show various production lists, and when I start to feel buoyed, the music suddenly turns into a spooky ensemble, followed by a spooky piano solo. If you've seen Hitchcock's movies, you're not familiar with this kind of music. So I had to sit up straight.
A man and a woman are silent in a room cut off from the outside world by curtains. The woman couldn't hold back her breath several times, and went to open the curtains, but the scenery outside was bland and didn't make her feel interesting at all. She turned to look at the man, whose face was now as lifeless as a corpse.
This is "the end of bourgeois love", I cannot paraphrase from the book. Because I don't know what kind of people the so-called bourgeoisie is, I have never contacted them, or maybe I am a part of them. But from the woman's resentful and helpless expression, I could read her inner struggle, her strong need to break free from the shackles of this man, because she was not happy.
I think the stupid thing about men and women is that when the other person leaves them, they always think of a third person who may not even exist.
There are two great shots in this scene, a close-up of the woman's legs and the reflection of the woman's face in the mirror. In real life, our eyes can't just focus on a square picture, only in the movie, the director shows the image in our eyes through his understanding, so that we can focus on the movie.
The first time Victoria showed us her true nature was playing African at a friend's friend's house. She painted her skin black, wrapped herself in a blanket, donned exaggerated jewelry, and began dancing to Aboriginal music. While helping a friend find her dog that night, she was attracted by Ding Ling, who was standing in a row of flagpoles. I don't know what she was thinking or why she was attracted to this, but her expression was meaningful, as if she had found her way.
At the stock exchange, Victoria met Pierrot, a stock trader, who soon fell in love with Victoria and pursued her passionately. Victoria was always unsure of her emotions, and at first she was always dodging. Pierrot and Cador were both money-seekers, but Victoria didn't want money. In Victoria's room, she held up old pictures of her mother's past and said:
"That's what she worries about, poverty."
"That's what a lot of people worry about."
"But it's not what I worry about, like I never have I thought about being rich."
Probably Victoria's dodging and playing hard-to-play led the translators at the beginning to name the film "The Sea of Desires and Shy Flowers". But obviously this is a very superficial translation. Victoria's dodging is a manifestation of inner panic and confusion. When she and Piaro made out, she was enthusiastic and resisted for a while. This contradiction was very strong. Antonioni can be said to be very clever in expressing the inner struggle of women.
A phrase Victoria often says is "I don't know". I'm not annoyed by this answer, I even think I know her better than Piaro, so I won't get mad at her in my heart "you just say you don't know, you don't know". I understand this feeling, maybe it's the feeling that only women can understand each other. When you face a lifetime commitment, when you face an unknown future.
Piaro's evidence business seems to have encountered difficulties. When he parted with Victoria, he said: "You will come tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow." Love is much more advanced. As much as I like Piaro, I'm sure Victoria will leave him one day, maybe in Africa.
In the last ten minutes of the film, with the lonely music, various street scenes continued to appear, and the male and female protagonists never showed up again. This may be the so-called stream of consciousness, which may seem pointless, but this is life.
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