Anyone familiar with Abbas' identity knows that he is not only a director, but also a screenwriter and a poet. Those familiar with Abbas' films also know that the focus of his films is not on the story, but on the text. Its usual theme is to start from the fictional nature of the film, trying to restore the truth behind the story, considering the form of content and structure, it is to bring the film as a fictional art back to the real life. In a word, it is about the ambiguity, confusion, switching, and blending of true and false.
In this way, "Like a River in Love" is naturally a typical Abbasid film, and the film's introduction even calls it a sequel to "Legal Copy". In "Legal Copy", Abbas introduced the concept of "fake" for its true and false proposition, that is, whether the original copied copy can replace the real one to exert its own originality and different aesthetic value, the film gives its own s answer. Also in terms of form, the director has also made a lot of explorations that are fake and real, such as the scene of identity change. Two men and women who met for the first time were mistaken by the proprietress of the cafe as husband and wife. After the two went out of the store, the film actually made the two become a husband and wife without prompting. Many viewers regard this scene as Abbas's childlike performance art, and personally disagree with it seriously. Yu Hua said in his evaluation of the novel "The Third Bank of the River": The Brazilian writer is talking about this There is nothing strange about the story, it seems to be a story from the beginning like everyday life, but it is not a story of everyday life at all, it shocks the reader because it leads the reader to the unfathomable mind The night sky, or leads the reader to the third bank of the river. In my opinion, Abbas's unique genius is comparable to the idea of Joao Guimaraes Rosa's "The Third Bank of the River".
After solving the problem of true and false exchange, "Like a River of Love" is not difficult to interpret. At the old writer's house, the conversation between him and the girl who helped him started with a painting, and went straight to the point. Immediately, it was a hint of suspicion about authenticity. The girl said that she was not only like the person in the painting, but also like the writer's daughter in the photo. The writer's deceased wife in the photo. Judging from the meticulous and thoughtful arrangement of the old writer and the emotional atmosphere, it is obvious that he called the girl for assistance, not for physical comfort (or not just for physical comfort), but subconsciously, this woman should correspond to her identity as a wife . But the girl's tiredness made the candlelight dinner unsustainable. He turned off the lights and unplugged the phone line for her. This light-hearted love and pity obviously regarded the latter as his daughter (junior). When the girl's boyfriend appeared the next day, the separation of identity started from a misunderstanding. The boyfriend thought he was the girl's grandfather. One is a teacher and the other is a fisherman. So far, the true and false attributes of identity have been treated as a borderline, and the ambiguity of meaning also makes the true and false appear even more indistinguishable. When the identity was clarified due to an accident and the truth was revealed, the old writer took the beaten girl home, and on the steps of the house, because of a misunderstanding by the neighbors, the girl was regarded as the granddaughter of the old writer. The next time pushed the boat, and readily admitted it. The concern, care, and distress shown by the old man seemed to be really her grandfather. In the simple story of just one day, under the seemingly calm turbulence, the identities and mutual relationships of the two people alternated under the combination of multiple guessing and probing, and they unconsciously produced a chemical reaction and completed it. Mix the real with the fake. The subtlety of the film lies in the fact that the momentary trance warmth in the exchange from false to true is the leap from heavy to light, from life to poetry.
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