First published on WeChat public account: Carp Movie Manual
"Who Do You Think I Am" is directed by Safi Naib and starring French national treasure actress Juliette Binoche. It is a literary film that explores the desire, love, crisis and predicament of middle-aged women.
The Internet has completely changed human life in the past two decades. We work on the Internet, consume on the Internet, play games on the Internet, entertain on the Internet, communicate on the Internet, and even face the screen and stay motionless on the Internet. , Of course, we can also have a vigorous love on the Internet.
But can't hug each other, can't touch each other, can't kiss each other, can't look each other's eyes and say "I love you", is this really still love? After all, in the virtual online world, we don't even know who the other party is.
The film begins with a female patient telling her psychiatrist a peculiar emotional experience.
Claire (Juliette Binoche) is a professor of literature at a university. After her divorce, she is depressed and frustrated in her emotional life. She has been unable to get out of the shadow of divorce.
The first close-up of Juliette Binoche's face at the beginning of the film shocked me. My impression of her has always been fixed in the era of blue, white and red. Although I have seen many films starring her later, I heard her The name, her bright eyes and white teeth are always in my mind. Movies are really the greatest art of human beings. Time can make a face old, but movies can make a person always beautiful in the hearts of the audience.
Rodo (Guillaume Gouy) is Claire's dating partner. Although the two are passionate when they meet, the twenty-year age gap always makes Claire feel insecure about their relationship.
Claire couldn't stand Rhodo's detached attitude. In order to peek into Rhodo's life, Claire used the photo of her niece to register a 24-year-old girl Clara's account on Facebook, but she could use Clara's identity to apply for Rhodo's friend When Clara was rejected.
Unwilling to fail, Claire tries to add Rodo's roommate, and young photographer Alex approaches Rodo's life, shortly after Alex agrees to Clara's friend request.
After Claire and Alex became friends, the chat was hot. Claire used her 24-year-old identity and the soul of a 55-year-old female literature professor to quickly conquer Alex's young heart. A spiritual love between the clouds was vigorous. 's started.
In the process of interacting with Alex, Claire gradually felt unable to hold herself back, fell into it step by step, and lost herself in the dual identities of Claire and Clara. But at the same time, Claire began to exude the shyness, joy and obsession of a 24-year-old young woman.
As the relationship deepened, Alex became more and more obsessed with the fictional Clara, no longer satisfied with only hearing Clara's voice on the phone for comfort, and was eager to meet Clara. Alex's request made Claire realize the danger of seeing the light of death. In order to cover up the initial lie, Claire tried her best to delay and prevaricate Alex with more lies.
The desire that had been suppressed for a long time in Claire's heart also began to stir. She also longed for physical contact with Alex, but this online strangeness that started from deception gradually developed in a direction out of control.
As a movie that starts from online dating and tells about middle-aged women getting out of emotional crisis, the idea of the movie is very good, but unfortunately the screenwriter's skills are not enough. Without Juliette Binoche's superb acting skills, it would have been difficult to escape the final collapse. Fortunately, Juliette Binoche saved the film by himself.
When love begins, it must begin at one level of desire or spirit. Desires can arise in an instant, and falling in love with a person from a spiritual level requires a process. The love between Alex and Claire on both ends of the phone in this movie certainly didn't start with desire.
If Alex falls in love with a person just based on a few photos of Clara, it will completely subvert the original intention of the movie. In other words, in terms of desire alone, a beautiful mature woman like Claire in Kochi is not necessarily much less lethal to a 24-year-old boy like Alex than a 24-year-old girl.
The script did not show the process of Claire conquering Alex from the spiritual level. Two people who have never met, in the communication of words and language, the mature party is more likely to make the naive party infatuated. The movie would be better if more effort was put into the dialogue between the two. The current plot really doesn't show how much charisma Claire showed in the process of communicating between the two.
As I said before, I think Juliette Binoche's performance saved the film, and the director should also realize the power of Juliette Binoche. In the movie, the director used a long shot to give Juliet a lot of facial close-ups. Because of the particularity of the plot of this movie, a lot of the dialogue between Claire and Alex in the movie is actually a one-man show where Juliet speaks to the air. Juliette Binoche uses a large number of small changes in expressions to bring the emotional changes of the character Claire to life in a long shot.
Joy, sadness, confusion, hesitation, tangle, pain. Juliette Binoche's performance is very restrained, and the upper and lower limits of emotional fluctuations are controlled within a very small range, often completing several emotional ups and downs in one shot, allowing the audience to deeply feel the heart of the character Claire. world. And when Claire was in love with Alex, Claire's face glowed like a soul possessed by a 24-year-old girl, which made people fall to the ground.
A 24-year-old actress can play a 55-year-old role by relying on makeup, and a 55-year-old actress can play a 24-year-old girl's heart by acting.
This book doesn't discuss much about women's rights, and it mainly focuses on women's desires and emotions in the mid-life crisis. But some of the details involved in the movie still make me feel the huge difference in the way women and men think about emotional issues at this age.
It is also a relationship with an age difference of more than 20 years. If the older man is a man, he often pursues desire, while a woman yearns for the unity of body and mind. This must be inseparable from the lower body thinking of most men. At the same time, most men are willing to think separately from the physical and spiritual levels, while women are often reluctant to face sexual fantasies and sexual pleasure. Many times, it has little to do with feelings . There are only feelings that last forever, and the lasting power of desires is not long. Long-term infatuation with a person is often stage after stage, constantly regenerating new desires for a person.
This is not to say that cheating in marriage is justifiable. In addition to desire and feelings, marriage must also be blessed with morality and responsibility. And this kind of restraint can help the restraint of primitive desires and let the marriage go through the bottleneck period again and again, which is not within the scope of this film's discussion.
Just think about Claire's situation in the movie, a single woman will feel guilty for sleeping with a man who has no emotional communication, so women are more concerned about eternity and mutual control than men. The reason for this movie is precisely control. The abandoned Carlisle is afraid of being abandoned again, and wants to control the man in his life, which eventually leads to gradually losing control. At the same time, the film clearly expresses that it is much easier for a 55-year-old man to be with a 24-year-old woman than a 55-year-old woman to be with a 24-year-old man.
Equal rights between men and women is really not something that can be achieved by a few female presidents, female soldiers, and female astronauts. In the movie, Claire talked about Ibsen's "A Doll's House" and Duras' "The Lover" in class. The independence of women's self-consciousness may really start from the fact that men can be treated as dolls for pleasure, although it is a bit extreme. , but the original origin of gender differences happens to start with sexual awareness.
In fact, not all human beings are prisoners of the universe. Some people's inner world can be as boundless as the universe. But everyone is a prisoner of time. A scalpel and hyaluronic acid cannot help human beings escape from prison successfully. A beauty like Juliet Binoche can't stop the old age.
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