Meet Love Around the Corner of the World is a Bulgarian film. In 1946, Bulgaria became a socialist country with the assistance of the Soviet Union. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries gradually moved closer to a capitalist society. Bulgaria is currently a member of the European Union.
"Meeting Love at the Corner of the World" begins the film with a car accident, and develops the plot in two directions, forward and backward, and with two story lines. Saxi is a young man living in Germany who makes a living by translating instructions for vacuum cleaners. One day, he had a serious car accident with his parents, in which he lost all his memory and his parents did not survive. Since his maternal grandparents in Bulgaria were his only relatives in the world, the hospital contacted them. After learning the bad news, my grandfather immediately packed simple luggage and rushed to Germany to visit Saxi.
Saxi's grandfather, Baidan, was a master of backgammon. He played chess with friends in the town pub every day. Before Saxi moved to Germany with his parents when he was a child, Baidan would often take Saxi to play chess together. He also made a backgammon for Saxi himself. After ten or twenty years of separation, Bai Dan forbeared his grief for his daughter and son-in-law, and went to the hospital to visit Saxi, but Saxi could not remember anything or anyone.
Bai Dan tries to revive Saxi's memory. He privately pried open the door of Saxi's house, and saw a table of vacuum cleaner instructions and a dusty backgammon box. This is the backgammon he made for Saxi back then, and it is also one of the few souvenirs from his hometown brought to Germany by his daughter and son-in-law. Bai Dan took this backgammon to the hospital, hoping to help Saxi recover his memory.
Saxi resists reminiscing about the past, and is unwilling to play chess with her grandfather. Even if the body has recovered, he is reluctant to leave the hospital. Because in his heart, he was afraid of finding out that he didn't recognize his parents' faces -- he didn't know they were dead. Regarding Saxi's cowardly escape, although Bai Dan tried to guide him patiently, he finally couldn't bear to scold him, and told him the truth about the death of his parents, asking him to summon the courage to walk out of the hospital and face everything.
Saxi finally took the first step. He walked out of the hospital and sat down with his grandfather to play backgammon in the sun. Saxi also agreed to return to his hometown in Bulgaria with Baidan, but he did not expect that Baidan would choose to return to his hometown in the strangest way. The two rode a tandem bike together and followed the path the family of three moved to Germany at that time. in the opposite direction. Saxi left his hometown with his parents when he was about ten years old and smuggled all the way to West Germany. When Saxi and Bai Dan rode towards Bulgaria, the past events of leaving home also emerged scene after scene.
While in Bulgaria, Sahi's father was a factory worker. One day, the factory manager called him and said that when he was in the army, he had beaten and offended his superiors, so he was expelled from the Youth League. However, he concealed this experience and got his current job. The factory manager said that if he wanted to protect himself, he had to monitor his father-in-law and other colleagues in the factory for the organization. Saxi's father-in-law was a pro-democracy activist who had been imprisoned for 15 years, and the organization wanted to know his movements.
Saxi's father was very embarrassed. In the heavy rain, he went to the bar that his father-in-law often went to. He was soaked and sat in front of his father-in-law, but he couldn't open his mouth to tell the truth, so he decided to run away. Although the wife is full of reluctance, she can only pack up her luggage and take her son and her husband away from home. At night, they came to the border, ready to climb over the wall and cross the border. The three panicked people were dragging their heavy luggage, but at this moment, the suitcase could not bear the weight, and it broke apart and the clothes were scattered all over the floor. A young soldier with a gun turned around the corner of the wall and saw the three panicked people. In the dark silence they looked at each other before the soldier turned and left.
Sahi and her parents fled Bulgaria, entered Italy, and lived in a refugee shelter. The shelter accommodates refugees from all over Eastern Europe, but since Italy has no asylum-related laws, these refugees can only wait for help from other countries in this shelter. Many have been there for years, enduring squalid conditions and poor food. Although they can go to the streets and appreciate the prosperity of Italy, they have no money, no identity, and no language skills, so they can only watch from the sidelines. Although there are intermediaries who assist smuggling, the amount requested is not affordable for most people.
Due to the harsh environment in the shelter, Saxi's father and the kitchen staff fought and caused larger-scale chaos. This incident made the wish of a family of three to successfully emigrate to West Germany become elusive, and smuggling seems to be the only hope. In order to raise enough money, Saxi's father had to go to bars in the city to gamble with people. Fortunately, backgammon was one of his rare specialties, which allowed him to earn enough money to smuggle his family to West Germany. start life again.
Saxi and his grandfather, who lost their memory, rode their bikes back home. Along the way are clear skies, vast seas and green grasslands. The forgotten past is also picked up piece by piece. But some fragments are still floating behind the memory, waiting to be pieced together.
When the two came to a night market in Italy, a band of middle-aged people played traditional Bulgarian music. The cheerful and optimistic Bai Dan immediately danced the traditional dance to the music. The people around were immediately infected by the joyful atmosphere and danced along with it. Saxi, who was pulled down by Baidan to dance, met a girl from Hungary who was about to return to Germany in the crowd. After the music ended, Saxi returned to Bai Dan's side, and he didn't dare to have any thoughts about the girl who briefly met. But Bai Dan encouraged him to date that girl, just as he always reminded Saxi when he was a child: although the world is big, there is love around the corner. Only then did Saxi pluck up the courage to have a deep relationship with the girl.
Saxi and Baidan embarked on a journey again the next day and came to the shelter where Saxi and his parents had stayed at that time. That shelter has been abandoned, and there are no more refugees to take in. There, Saxi found a toy car that he had secretly hidden as a child, and looking at the toy car, he remembered everything. It turned out that not long after Saxi's parents arrived in West Germany, the two divorced and separated. Saxi was raised by her mother. For more than ten years, both father and mother have lived a single life, and only recently have decided to be together again. To celebrate their new life, their parents and Saxi decide to drive back to their hometown together, but a tragic car accident happens on the way.
Saxi finally remembered all the memories, but Baidan took the bus home early the next morning. Obviously Saxi no longer needs Bai Dan's guidance. Saxi completes the rest of the journey by car alone, returning to the homeland he has left for many years. As soon as he crossed the Bulgarian border, Sassi saw a man's campaign billboards hanging everywhere, saying "Welcome to the new Bulgaria." This man was the director of the factory where Saxi's father worked, and he asked Saxi's father to monitor his grandfather. Grandmother was very happy to see Saxi, but grandfather was not at home, but in the bar, waiting for Saxi to come back to play chess. Bai Dan and Saxi are inextricably linked, and in the end they must roll the dice to decide the winner. Bai Dan, a master of backgammon, rolled two sixes. It's time for Sassi. Saxi always remembered what his grandfather taught him, "Wish with your heart and finally get your wish", so he thought with his heart, and then rolled the dice, it turned out to be six and seven, and one of the dice shattered into two because of too much force. flap, 1 point more. Saxi defeated Bai Dan! Saxi finally returned to Germany, and he went back to find the girl he met in Italy.
"Meeting Love at the Corner of the World" develops the entire movie with two lines, one line is the present, the other is the past. On the surface, it wants people to face life with an optimistic attitude and grasp every happy moment. But in private, it is to remind the people of Bulgaria to face the history of the past. That history may be painful or unbearable, but it is a part of life and a part of the country. What everyone should do is to face it bravely, rather than forgetting and escaping. Saxi abandoned his memories of his hometown and lived a humble life of translating manuals in Germany. But when he picked up his own pieces again, he surpassed and strengthened himself. He had the wisdom to beat his grandfather at the chess game and the courage to go back to Germany to pursue the girl he liked.
The theme of "Meeting Love at the Corner of the World" is actually relatively heavy, but the director shot it in a lighter and warmer way, which is why this film is widely welcomed by the audience. But the shortcoming of this film is also that the technique is too warm, which makes the commercial color surpass its artistic color. In the description of past memories, there is more than enough hard work but not enough pain. The escape of a family of three should have been life and death, hardships and fears, but the director arranged it to have a rather light-hearted atmosphere. As for the description of the current time series, it is a little too beautiful and simple. Parents who have been divorced for many years suddenly decided to get back together. Saxi, who suffered a serious car accident, has almost no sequelae. His grandfather in his 60s rode a two-person agreement car across 2 countries. The toy car for many years is still in place, and when I return to my hometown, I suddenly improve my chess skills, and the intact dice unexpectedly cracks. All of these dilute the sense of reality of the film, add the beauty and innocence unique to idol dramas, and detract from the significance of the film's era.
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