contains some spoilers.
"London Life", which premiered on July 21, 2016, with the English name "Fleabag", was written and co-starred by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and was classified as comedy on Imdb, with a score of 8.2.
The English title, which is also the heroine's name - Fleabag - itself has the meaning of "sloppy person", and the trivial life events shown in the six episodes of the story accurately confirm this word.
She runs a cafe, but almost no one patrons her, and the occasional customers are just to rub the phone; she has a boyfriend and a sexual life, but she can't feel love; she has a sister, but even hugging feels like a horror Assault; having a father is better than not having; she has friends who are precisely the source of her joy and pain.
The heroine opened a cafe with her friend Boo, but Boo found out that her boyfriend cheated on him. And the heroine's boyfriend finally broke up after seeing her ziwei many times. The heroine goes on a date with the ugly man she met on the bus. In the interview, she lost her chance because of her unrestrained behavior, and the cafe that she opened with Boo was also facing closure. However, the sister of a compatriot is not only rich, but also has a "perfect" life. The few intersections between the two are thanks to their father to listen to a feminist lecture that they have no interest in at all.
The heroine keeps screwing up, whether it's dating or getting back with her boyfriend, and in the end, she's all torn apart by her "indifferent" and "disrespectful behavior". She took the yp object she met to the sex toy store to pick up a vibrator, and on the night she reunited with her boyfriend to satisfy herself, she stole the stepmother's collection from her father's house and wanted to exchange money... Finally, she experienced the abandonment of her relatives and her career. After the failure of her life and the departure of her feelings, this woman, who had always been indifferent, finally sat in that uncared-for coffee shop and shouted out the fact that she had always been:
I am the only one.
The plot of "London Life" looks very messy, the characters appear alternately, open up all kinds of "uncommon" words in your world view, plus the shooting techniques of the characters and the audience, if you don't control it properly, it will turn from black humor to self-defeating. . Fortunately, the actress who plays the heroine is also the screenwriter. With her accurate control of language and performance rhythm, she skillfully connects all seemingly unrelated trivial matters, and finally, in the climax of the last episode, the protagonist's Life pushes to the peak of "mourning".
In this film, there are no high-frequency words from the beginning to the end, but it has been secretly shrouded in the picture throughout the 6 episodes.
Fail.
There is no doubt that there is no excuse, simple failure.
Foul-mouthed, rude, full of sex-suggested lines, appearing and disappearing line by line at the bottom of the screen. When you are amused by them and the heroine's emoticons and various exaggerated performances, you will laugh at the table, and there is always a pair of invisible hands pulling down the corner of your mouth in the smile, and it smoothes the corner of your eyes. The lines wrinkled from laughing too deeply, it blindly covers your eyes so that you can hear the voice in your ear: You are only laughing at yourself.
If you really do a survey, there may be far more failures than successful people in this world. The criteria for defining failure can be either self-evaluation or social evaluation. And the saddest part of the heroine in this film is that no matter what standard she is judged from, she is a failure.
She does not meet society's universal standards for success or happiness, and without a warm and beautiful family, even a stable romantic relationship is difficult to maintain. Not even a decent job, not just the one without a business card, she doesn't even have a job title or title.
However, she did not meet the happiness in her self-evaluation. She clearly knew that she had screwed up everything, but she still did not mean to stop. Losing friends, not being trusted by relatives, plus a love life with only sex and no love. In those flashing pictures, her exaggerated smile and wide eyes finally changed to another style.
His eyes were dim, his face expressionless.
After watching the show at station B, I was deeply impressed by some of the views on the barrage. Some people don't understand "what's so sympathetic to such a sloppy and bad heroine", and some people say "no wonder anyone because everything is all her own mess".
But do losers need sympathy?
Probably doesn't even need to be understood.
A short, succinct script and well-executed performances make "London Life" more of a documentary than a promotional or educational film. In my understanding, it does not want to explain the horror of failure or the value of success, nor does it mean to call people to live a positive and optimistic life by means of comparison. "London Life" focuses more on presentation, presenting an extreme but real life state, an attitude towards life that is almost completely opposite to mainstream propaganda. Ego and inferiority coexist, vicious tongue and tenderness coexist, indifference and true feelings are intertwined in the same role, all the so-called "reversals" are just "expected" we are used to from life.
For a long time, all the movies and TV dramas we have seen will inevitably have a theme, which is easy to summarize or analyze and write. It is not difficult to find that the endings of most dramas are positive. In the family fun-type dramas, most of them will have scenes similar to the happy family and the couple embracing and laughing at the end. In dramas with villains or villains, even if the villains are not brought to justice in the end, there will definitely be a positive image that rivals their strength, representing the people's aspirations for truth, goodness and beauty.
Pursuing the truth, the good and the beautiful, and rejecting the false and the empty, there is no point of contention, because such values are more conducive to social harmony and the formation of a civilized, legal, free and equal society.
But if it is just a personal world, on the premise of not violating legal ethics and harming others, is truth, goodness and beauty really so attractive to us? Is it really the same status as absolute guidance?
In that famous screenwriting textbook, there is a paragraph about the villain, which probably means that even if he is a bad guy, he is doing what is right in his values. Facts have also proved that each of us is not completely true, good and beautiful or completely false. People are like a collection of good and bad things in the world. When the good and positive parts far outweigh the bad parts, a kind and positive person will appear, but it does not mean that the darkness no longer exists, it is just nesting in away from real life.
The reason why "London Life" makes people feel sad and resonant is precisely because it puts both positive and negative sides in the picture at the same time. The mourning part is the heroine's exaggerated expressions, behaviors that do not conform to social etiquette in real life, and absurd, selfish, and self-defeating logic. The part that resonates is the support she gave when her sister was confused and hesitant, the real reaction after being distrusted or betrayed, the fact that she stood at the door of her remarried father and told the fact that she was a loser, but there was still something in her eyes. Expect some comforting words from your father.
That's why "London Living" feels "unsympathetic" but also "unbelievable".
I'm glad we have finally reached an era where we don't deify winners and don't demonize failures. We can make a hymn to success, and we can make a "documentary" about failure. In this film, you don't need to shout "failure is the mother of success" like a perfect composition in elementary school, and you don't have to force yourself to find any useful experience from failure, just sit in front of the screen, open the possibility of drinking Just eat the fat Coke potato chips, and quietly watch the whole process of "failure". Like the heroine, maybe you laugh out loud, maybe your eyes are slightly red, but in the end when the black screen appears "THE END", you sit up and life will continue.
This underdog's "documentary" doesn't actually give us the full heart-wrenching experience. In the final scene, the interviewer sits across from the heroine and gives her a chance to re-interview with a smile. The story chooses to stop here, and I refuse to speculate on what will happen next, whether those futures are good or bad.
I only know that it is a drama after all. If it is in life, will the interviewer really give a second chance?
Ps A super immature audio-visual analysis
can't write audio-visual analysis, so I avoided picture scheduling, color and music, shots and angles, and simply talked about a lot of mess (yes, I know clearly that the above are all messed up) crap 23333) ideas, but this movie deserves a lot more than that.
The first is a shooting technique known as breaking the "fourth wall," in which characters speak directly to the camera—that is, the audience. This technique is more common on theatrical stage. The first time I saw this technique used in a film and television drama was in "House of Cards", in which Underwood often turned around to explain the plot and explain to the camera. Inner activity or direct dialogue and communication with the audience.
Even when the exercise on the bed is intense, the heroine will turn her head to make a simple communication with the audience. Although it looks quite cool, it actually requires the skill of the actors. The moment you turn your head, to achieve absolute natural smoothness, there is a slight deviation. Not only is it easy for the audience to dance, but it will also make people discover the deliberateness of this shooting technique, and the original effect will naturally not be achieved.
The second is the lens change in the play. In the film "The Graduate", which has become a textbook of lens change, a set of scenes of the bed scene were edited quite coolly. know how. Similarly, in "London Living", the natural camera changes help the audience to enter the plot more quickly. In the process of constantly breaking the "fourth wall", as well as in the process of interspersed narrative and memory, the proper switching of shots mainly helps the plot achieve a comic effect and also helps to control the overall rhythm.
Finally, the design of the grotesque and satirical scenes, the contrast between life and death while jogging in the cemetery, and the contrast between the comfortable heroine and the shy man in the adult store, are all interesting. But the most impressive set of pictures should be on the subway, where the heroine imagines that people are screaming out the pain in their hearts through tangled facial expressions and exaggerated body movements. With AWOLNATION's song "Sail", the rhythm is just right, and every silent shout perfectly corresponds to the "groaning of pain" in the song (although I think it's a bit wrong to describe it, but I really don't know whether it's called accent or harmony. or any other professional vocabulary). Many people said in the barrage that they finally found the source of the ghost video, which is also the purpose of the whole play.
Only these three points are the most expressive. In fact, there are many scenes of characters in the whole play, multi-person or single, whether it is the arrangement of the pictures or the grasp of reality, although the basics are quite worth learning. The overall tone and style of the picture is consistent, and it is rather dim. Even in a bright scene, there is a dim yellow feeling, which is in line with people's general perception of London. And the full tone really makes the viewer look comfortable. There is not a lot of music interspersed in the whole play. I found a few playlists on NetEase Cloud, and only heard Sail and an ending song. I don't know much about music, I can only say that Sail is really good.
Finally, I hope you all have a satisfactory viewing experience.
(yes this ending is quite unprofessional)
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