Tornatore's films have always been based on the background of the hometown and small town. Whether it is Dodoro who has been out for many years returning to his hometown or Malena who has been bullied back to the town again, the faint aftertaste of nostalgia lingers in the beginning and end of the work.
Compared with the calmer narrative methods in the past, the narrative method of this "Secret" is more gorgeous: behind a shocking story, a woman searches for her biological daughter in a foreign country, and perhaps also finds herself to exist in the world. the final way. This can still be classified as a kind of nostalgia, but this nostalgia is more profound and touching.
This film continues the legend of "The Pianist at Sea", turning a news that may have appeared in the newspapers into a female ode that alternates between intense and deep.
The narrative of the film is divided into two clues: present and past. In the present scene, the sequence of narration follows the sequence of events, but in the past part, it is reversed. On the one hand, it also conforms to the sequence of Jelena's memory, because people always have the strongest feelings for recent events. On the other hand, it also makes the film cascading. The nearly two-hour narrative will always suddenly appear when the plot becomes normal. There were twists and turns, which caused the audience to suffer a lot of shock during the whole process of watching the movie until the end of the movie.
In the present narrative, the suspense is deepened by the rapid clippings of "past" interventions in Jelena's life, including an inexplicable beating on Christmas Eve and the unexpected car accident of the hostess. At the same time, the layers of the peeled-off past gradually reveal a cruel past. Under the premise that the two narrative clues are in their own line, the two are constantly alternating at present, and finally merge into the climax of the whole film.
Most of Tornatore's films focus on "growth", and two important factors in growth films, "sex" and "death", also appear constantly in this film.
The opening paragraph in which a couple who wants to adopt a child chooses a favorite woman is a typical display of "sex". In the film, the women under the head of the prostitution organization accept the buyer's most direct physical selection one by one. Except for the hidden face, the rest of the body is undoubtedly exposed.
Such a beginning is undoubtedly bold, because the perspective of this part is completely third-person, and from a cold and objective perspective, women are completely in the position of being watched, showing the powerlessness and numbness of women's hearts. This is destined to be a song A sad song about weak women. After that, images of "sex" appeared again and again, and as a representative of the organization, Yelena, as a representative of the organization, flashed in the scene that she recalled the various abuses she had received in the past, and she still has lingering fears. The factor of "death" also appeared again and again, from the death of the lover, the killing of the leader of the organization for the lover's revenge, to the re-emergence of the attempted murder and the accidental death, the accidental car accident of the hostess, the death events throughout the film even made the film horrifying Increasing step by step, these also constitute the dangers that the protagonist must pass through in the process of pursuing his biological daughter and the meaning of life after the recovery of humanity.
Of note are the three potted plants she planted on the balcony of her apartment. Personally, I think the setting of this element is similar to the potted plants in "Killer Leon", the difference lies in the number. The green potted plants represent the new hope of Elena's life, and the number of three pots may be her remembrance of all her achievements in life. In the end, Jelena's hopes are dashed when she discovers that a plan she'd spent her life pursuing was entirely by chance. Fortunately, when she was sent back to China by the police, the first person Yelena with short hair met in her motherland was a girl with the same hair as herself. The two looked at each other in the sun. laugh. This is a warm ending to the film. This girl may be one of her many lost children. Her nostalgia, which no one knows about, finally has a home.
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