The feature film "Ordinary Woman", directed by Chilean director Sebastian Lelio, won the Silver Bear Award (Best Screenplay) and the Teddy Bear Award (LGBT theme) at the 67th Berlin Film Festival in 2017 , and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.
Text Appreciation
The name of "Ordinary Woman" is very coincidental. Its text is about a woman's love, which includes the ideal state and the impoverishment of reality, but this woman is actually not ordinary, she is a transgender person.
Like "Sweet Spring", the male and female protagonists of "Ordinary Woman" also go to Iguazu Falls. Geroge believes that Wong Kar Wai's waterfall represents the ideal love that can never be reached, while the Iguazu Falls in "Ordinary Woman" represents the ideal state of a certain love (the vision of the male and female protagonists in this film), and also represents the society The ideal attitude towards transgender people, it's there, but never gets there. At the beginning of the film, the director showed a 1 to 2-minute empty shot of the waterfall, the water vapor evaporated, and then immediately took the picture of the bathhouse. The male protagonist was lying in the water vapor in the bathhouse, and the water vapor was colored into colorful colors by the lights.
Colorful represents "comrade", and the identity of the protagonist is hinted here. (The heroine fell in love with the hero when she was still a boy, of course, this is explained by the lines later). At the same time, it also hints at the minority theme of the film.
The cruelest reality that the heroine faces is that she has to break through many obstacles before she can say goodbye to her lover like an ordinary woman, and then say goodbye to a relationship that never ends.
The text of "Ordinary Woman" is very interesting, it doesn't tell you in advance that the heroine is transgender, and in the first ten minutes of the movie, we would think that the hero and heroine are ordinary people. Moreover, many idle pens also support her identity as an "ordinary woman". For example, when taking the elevator, the man will let her go first; when robbing a taxi, the man will also let her. In the eyes of passers-by who "do not know the truth", she is an "ordinary woman". The same applies to the audience, and after revealing her transgender identity, the audience recalls the previous plot and will think that she is no different from other ordinary women.
However, when we meet, it is difficult to say goodbye. It is not easy for the male and female protagonists to break through the world while they are alive. The male protagonist's ex-wife did not allow her to attend the memorial service and funeral (reminiscent of Hong Kong director Shu Qi's "Forty Guys"). When she appeared at the memorial service, she was kidnapped and humiliated by the male protagonist's relatives and friends. People who know her true identity forbid her to say goodbye like an "ordinary woman" on the grounds that it will bring "psychological shadows" to the children at the scene. One is to say goodbye to her boyfriend, and the other is to protect her children. Both reasons seem to be impeccable. The contradiction is presented very sharply here, to the point where no one can retreat. We don't care whether the "protecting children" is true or not, but transgender Marina can't reach the ideal Iguazu Falls after all.
Marina's counterattack
Society's discrimination against Marina runs through the film throughout. Many deliberately arranged little details underpin this discrimination. For example, the problem of names: the name of the heroine is always called wrong or questioned, and the police believe that the heroine should be called the male name on the ID card; the son of the hero cannot tell whether the heroine is called "Maria" or "Marina"; The male protagonist's ex-wife directly called out the female protagonist's male name "Daniel" when arguing with the female protagonist, and the subtext was nothing more than "you fake woman".
The social discrimination and questioning represented by the police, doctors, and her boyfriend's family almost engulfed Marina after the male protagonist's death. How should Marina fight back? The movie gives a clear answer: don't hide in the peach blossom garden, but fight back.
scene meaning
In "Ordinary Woman", after being kidnapped and humiliated by her boyfriend's son, the heroine walks into a Gay Bar, indulging in sensuality and numbing herself. The scene of Gay Bar represents a kind of utopia. Because only in the Gay Bar, comrades can dress up as much as they like, show their enchanting, and accept the cheers and applause of their peers. This is similar to the plot in "A Night Intoxicated by Spring Breeze" in which Qin Hao went to the Gay Bar alone to sing in reverse after being humiliated by his gay boyfriend's wife.
The director of "Ordinary Woman" even arranged a surreal scene. The entire stage of the Gay Bar became a neatly dressed song and dance show. Immediately afterwards, the director suddenly cut the picture to the picture of the heroine walking home alone in the heavy rain. The heroine was soaked and embarrassed, in stark contrast to the radiance just now. The director told us that Gay Bar is just a country of nothingness, and people will eventually return to the broken reality.
It's time to fight back
The second day after coming out of the Gay Bar, the heroine seemed to cheer up again. But when she opened the male protagonist's wardrobe, it was empty, and the expected waterfall ticket (or air ticket) did not appear. The empty wardrobe represents the reality of being stretched thin, and the heroine finally realizes that unless she goes to the funeral in person to say a ceremonial farewell to her boyfriend, she will not get any old things that she can mourn and reminisce about. At the same time, it is the appearance of the empty wardrobe that represents reality, and the unreachable Iguazu is endowed with the meaning of "ideal": it will never be reached! So the heroine flew to the cemetery and said goodbye under the guidance of the undead. After that, the heroine tried her best to devote herself to a new life.
Interestingly, before the female protagonist opened the male protagonist's wardrobe, she experienced a shuttle from the women's bathroom to the men's bathroom. The bathhouse is a place where men and women are strictly separated. For transgender people, it is dangerous here. The director used the heroine to shuttle between the women's bathhouse and the men's bathhouse to complete a nirvana for the heroine, as if saying "people have The right to transgender!" This is a behavioral expression of opinion, showing the screenwriter's strength.
fight back like a monster
When the heroine came to the crematorium, the funeral was over. At this time, the boyfriend's family drove over. They still abused and humiliated the heroine. Unexpectedly, the heroine jumped on the roof of the car and jumped hard. She was lying on the windshield. At the time, the director shot the scene from the inside of the car, simulating the viewpoint of the people inside the car, plus Marina's exaggerated movements and exposed red underwear, making her look like a monster. For transgender people, it is inevitable to be demonized. Why don't you just be a demon, I want you to see how evil I am! Here the director's framing angle is closely integrated with the text and meaning.
Appreciation of techniques
Meanwhile, the film has four Steadicam sequences, all tightly integrated with the text. The slight shaking brought by Steadicam is very closely integrated with the mood of the characters at the time. Once Marina received a phone call from her boyfriend's ex-wife at work, once Marina was led by a police officer for a medical examination, once Marina was kicked out of the memorial service by her boyfriend's relatives, and once was her boyfriend's dead soul leading Marina Go through a long and narrow corridor to the cremation site. These four times are the time when the heroine's mood is the most fluctuating.
The long shot before the police took Marina for examination. The director made a cut in the middle, from the front of Marina to the back. At this time, we couldn't see Marina's expression, only the chatter of the police, and then the camera moved to Marina is facing, she has a firm face, and said, "I don't do the examination." The director used Marina's back to hint at her frustration, which is very accurate. In the shot of Marina walking after coming out of the examination room, the light on her face flickered, and the light was closely combined with the character's bad mood. At the same time, in the scene where the undead leads Marina through the corridor, the director uses a more contrasting flickering of light and dark, and the rhythm of light and dark switching is well matched with suspense and mood. In the end, the men and women stopped and kissed under the red light. The red color represented enthusiasm and danger, and rendered the parting hard to remember.
"Ordinary Woman" is easily reminiscent of a Japanese film "The Tight Seams of Life" that showed the life of transgender people last year. If you compare the texts of the two films, it will be revealed that "The Tight Seams of Life" focuses more on the mental journey of a transgender person, because motherhood is also a transgender person's nature, but whether the survival soil of this nature is true, especially When the child's biological mother appears, this makes "The Tight Seams" more like a family ethics film. And "Ordinary Woman" pays more attention to society's discrimination and demonization of transgender people, which makes him more like a film that reflects social issues.
As for the description of the protagonist's mental journey, "Ordinary Woman" chose a light-hearted way, showing Marina's counterattack against life in several idle strokes. After her boyfriend died, Marina threw her punches into the air several times. In the end, she bought a boxing speed ball and thumped it before going out, leaving the ball swaying in the air. Boxing represents her self-growth.
The film makes no reference to childhood or to transgender self-identification. The heroine went to the vocal teacher when she was down and was comforted. At the same time, the vocal teacher also suggested that she continue to sing opera instead of singing and dancing pop songs. At the end of the film, the heroine stood on the stage and sang opera excerpts (or art songs), dressed elegantly and sang beautifully. The director tried to change the way of singing to imply her inner growth.
The mentor suggested that the female lead sing an opera, because opera is more solemn than pop songs, and can gain more respect from the audience and society? But is opera really more noble than pop song? George believes that it is debatable, so whether the change in singing style can really represent his inner growth, George thinks that the film here is a little unclear.
Another highlight of "Ordinary Woman" is the heroine's performance. When the heroine kisses her boyfriend's undead for the last time, she hesitates a little bit. The performance of this scene is very real and shows the skill of the actress.
But a scene in "Ordinary Woman" in the hospital frequently crossed the axis. This kind of cross-axis could not serve the text. George was very puzzled and could only think that it was the director's mistake.
If the artistic achievements of "Ordinary Woman" can be summed up in one word, George believes that "the text and techniques are all in place and accurate, but not necessarily outstanding", so it must be the best film of the year, but it is difficult to become a classic.
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