If I remember correctly, the nonsensical story told at the beginning of the film is that my parents always quarreled, and during the quarrel, my mother would always pick up a shotgun with no bullet and shoot it at my father. Tired of the quarrels and depressing life, and wanting to end it all, the son secretly loaded and loaded the shotgun. As a result, the day the son committed suicide by jumping off the building, his parents quarreled again. The mother pulled the trigger. The bullet missed the father but hit the son, who had jumped off the building and committed suicide. Then the suicide turned into murder... This coincidental story seems to be Guo Degang's quoted in a performance.
PTA is a technical master who is particularly good at creating narrative tension with editing and soundtracking, and a multi-line narrative film like this can undoubtedly fully demonstrate his ability in this regard (of course, his technical peak undoubtedly comes from "Private" Love Disorder"). For example, two-thirds of the way through the film, all the characters sang "Wise Up" together at the same time and in different places, using a sad chorus to express the similar mood of everyone. And the last frog rain made everyone witness the miracle in panic and stop falling.
The first half of the film shows the life of each character one by one. Jimmy, an aging quiz show host, has been terminally ill for a short time. His daughter Claudia is mentally ill and an addict. The relationship between the father and daughter broke down. When Jimmy came to Claudia's residence and informed him that he was terminally ill, Claudia broke down and drove him away. Prodigy Stanley has made it on Jimmy's show and is about to break the record set by another prodigy, Downey, three decades ago. The former prodigy Downey is now an ordinary electronics salesman and a gay who just fell in love with a male bartender. Sir Partridge is dying, confessing to his absurd past that he had abandoned his terminally ill ex-wife and son and that he continued to cheat, and now regrets it.
And his young current wife Linda asked the lawyer to change her will because she confessed that she married her husband because of his property, but now she finds out that she is in love with this old man who is decades older than her, so she Reluctance to accept the inheritance. Sir Partridge's son Frank is now a TV star, teaching men in the spotlight how to conquer women, but behind his success is the erasure and fiction of the past, and he doesn't want people to know that he and his mother were abandoned by their father. It was the pain of his life. Cop Jim falls in love with Claudia, but loses his gun on date night, leaving Claudia disappointed and miserable. All are in a state of decadence or depression or sadness.
The second half of the film spreads everyone's secrets and vulnerabilities on the table like decryption, allowing everyone to face their real flesh hidden in Chinese clothes. Jimmy told his wife that he had violated his daughter Claudia, which explains why Claudia resented her father so much and indulged herself in drugs. Hearing that at this time, his wife left him angrily, and he was destined to die alone. Claudia wanted to tell the police Jim about her real face and past when she was dating, but she finally stopped it, because it was too unbearable, maybe she would be so decadent all her life, love is just a mirage. Frank came to his father Partridge's bed and cursed his father with the dirtiest words. This was the best parting speech he could think of to give his father, but he still whispered "don't die, bastard" in pain.
Prodigy Stanley refused to answer the question and pissed his pants at the most critical moment of the game because he didn't want to live in the shadow of the prodigy anymore, didn't want to always be the first, and didn't want to lose other childhood pleasures, didn't want to be manipulated by adults, so he returned. When I got home, I told my father to "be nice to me", but his father didn't seem to care too much. The last rain of frogs allows all sinners to witness miracles. It is a vision of the end times, it is fright, it is washing, it is redemption. Someone died, someone woke up, someone returned the stolen money, someone attempted suicide, everything was disrupted, everything was already decided.
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