Special feature of 1905 film network Among the many blockbusters that will appear tomorrow, female directors’s first film, which is not from a regular class, may not be impressive. Besides, this movie has a strange name — — What’s in the dark.
It is such a slightly green debut that won the Best Director Award at this year’s FIRST Youth Film Festival and was praised by Jiang Wen as "a rare work that is so calm, so bad and so absurd". It seems that he saw the shadow of Sunny Days.
Jiang Wen presented Wang Yichun with the Best Director Award of FIRST Youth Film Festival.
In 1991, a serial rape and murder case occurred in the family area of Henan Zhongyuan Aircraft Factory as a clue, but the film is a slightly absurd growth process of 14-year-old girl Qujing. As written in the poster — — This is not the China version of memories of murder, but the story of a girl growing up wrapped in a bloody murder case.
There is no tearing, melodramatic and abortion, which are common in domestic youth films. The biggest highlight of the film is that in the early 1990s, the small society of state-owned factories was restored and reproduced as accurately as a scalpel. Wang Yichun, the director, once said that she wanted to "restore an unadorned and beautiful Xiu Xiu’s 1990s". Touching memories of youth about the best and worst 1990s with the clues laid out in the film.
[clothing]:
When the white shirt and red scarf meet the flowered shirt and jeans
What’s in the Black shows the early 1990s, which can be said to be the era of Chinese’s fashion awakening. Flower shirts, jeans, miniskirts, bell bottoms, and large shoulder pads were all fashion weathervanes of that era. In the movies of that year, it was everywhere.
Qu Ying, who has short hair and Jiang Wen, who is dressed in jeans, is at the forefront of fashion.
Zhang Guoli shows 100 ways to wear denim shorts in The Stubborn.
The sitcom I Love My Family is simply an encyclopedia of fashion in the 1990s.
In the small town of Henan where What’s in the Black happened, most of these so-called "fashion" items are exclusive labels of "bad children".
Zhang Xue, a repeater, and Zhao Fei, a punk, are leading the fashion of the small town. Whether it is a polka-dot tunic dress, a flowered shirt with jeans, or a pair of bright red high-heeled sandals, they are in sharp contrast with ordinary students’ white shirts, red scarves with suspenders, and they are also incompatible with the conservative and traditional aesthetics of the small town.
Zhang Xue is dressed like this, while flowers from other countries are dressed like this. …
When Qujing, the heroine, asked her parents for a pair of jeans, her parents instantly turned on the spit mode.
Mom: "It’s tight and hard, and it doesn’t grow long", while Dad simply said: "What jeans and donkey jeans? Aren’t they just the pants of the old denim? When will they become good things?" On the other hand, Zhang Xue’s mature dressing style was also pointed at by male students because of her prominent chest.
filmOne of the important scenes in the movie — — The town barber shop is also full of the flavor of the times, with colored plastic curtains hanging at the door and photo posters of Hong Kong and Taiwan stars plastered on the walls.
The first experience of the woman’s perm was based on Zheng Yuling, the "Do Sister" who was very popular at that time. Although it ended in tragedy.
It was also popular that year. …
Air, Liu Haier, whatever, they left over from playing.
Seller show and buyer show (you are not mistaken, this is Jay Chou)
The film’s description of the details of makeup is also very intriguing. Qu Jing, the opening song, is often painted with heavy makeup of red mouth’s red face when she participates in various performances of the choir. Only when she steals the beauty cream from her mother Yong Fang, does she really discover the significance of makeup to the growth of girls.
[Culture]:
Beyond in the Walkman and Peach in the Video Hall
The golden songs of the 1990 s are a necessary routine for nostalgic youth films. "What’s in the Black" also uses three golden songs to string together seed of love, the heroine of Qu Jing.
First, the little girl danced and sang Little Tiger’s Green Apple Paradise and Aaron Kwok’s I can’t finish loving you.
Then Qu Jing heard Beyond’s "Broad Sky" for the first time in the walkman of the boy who secretly loved her, and also experienced the feeling of love for the first time. After that, the abandoned roof became a stage for two people, who sang together in nonstandard Cantonese: "Forgive me for my unruly love and freedom in my life."
In an interview, the director once said that Beyond was the favorite of her youth, so it had a special position in the film. Beyond made me realize that songs can be sung like this.
In addition, movies such as Once in a Thousand Years, A Dream of a New Mandarin Duck and Butterfly, About Winter and running with the bulls are all background sounds with strong flavor of the times. In the song of Chyi Yu’s "Olive Tree", Zhang Xue also published a declaration of freedom that "I will leave this broken place to wander in the morning and evening".
How many posters on the wall are yours, memories of youth?
Interestingly, these golden songs of Hong Kong and Taiwan, which represent popular culture, are in sharp contrast with Dedication of Love sung by the school choir and Embroidered Red Flag hummed by my mother, reappearing the interweaving and collision between the main theme of that era and popular culture.
Another cultural symbol in the film is the video hall full of taboos and temptations. The door is covered with posters of erotic films, whose names are quite hot, and you can smell the smell of mildew and tobacco through the screen.
The little girl in a white shirt and red skirt is crying in the video hall when the peach is ripe, which is very surreal and absurd. But I’m afraid that many people in that era had completed the so-called youth enlightenment in such places and films.
If you think that Zhang Xue is just an uneducated poor student, it is all wet. Zhang Xue once solemnly educated Qujing to read more literary masterpieces, cultivated his sentiment and improved his temperament. He was a literary youth who yearned for freedom and ideals. The poem she read in the playground is Xi Murong’s Death of Bai Niao. Rehearsing with Qu Jing is an excerpt from A Dream of Red Mansions, but she has to play the second grandma, and Qu Jing is just a Pinger.
[educational article]
Chinese Education and Lost "Sex"
In the film, the victim’s thighs were painted with red crosses, and the students teased Jiang Si, a poor student, just like the red cross behind his name on the evaluation list. These symbolic big red crosses and big red flowers show the polarized cognition of teachers and parents about "bad students" and "good students" at that time, and the standard of judgment is often only grades.
In my mother’s view, Qu Jing’s award for learning Lei Feng’s exemplary role is far less valuable than that of "three good students". After learning that poor student Zhang Xue may be killed, the teacher’s attitude is: "I hope everyone will take Zhang Xue as a warning and devote themselves to learning."
Wang Yichun, the director, once said in an interview, "The murderer can be everyone: because families and schools judge good or bad education by their grades, and neglect and disrespect for’ bad students’ creates a bad soil. Cold violence from every corner of the family and school and disregard for individual dignity are fueling the evil flowers in the dark. "
"Formalization" is a point that often arouses us to smile in movies. Those loud slogans and emotional speeches are like "big-headed dolls" running through the film. Every face is filled with exaggerated happy smiles, but there always seems to be some absurdity, hypocrisy and gloomy unreality behind the smiles.
In addition, Qujing’s typical Chinese education is also reflected in his parents’ indifference to adolescent sex education. In the eyes of parents, sex is "something off the table". Qujing was slapped for playing with her mother’s menstrual belt, and was scolded by her father for cheating on her and sitting in the back seat of her bike, but her parents never told her why.
Qujing and seed of love, a senior boy, were regarded as "puppy love" by their father, and even more directly reprimanded "there is no fucking friendship between men and women in this world".
In the film, Qujing, like many girls in that era, learned about sex from books, video halls and classmates, but only had no parents and teachers.
[Environment]
The Lost State-owned Factory Memory Zhongyuan Aircraft Factory may also be Gansu Baiyin Factory.
"What’s in the Black" set up the story in the family area of Henan Zhongyuan Aircraft Factory. And such fully functional but extremely closed industrial towns derived from state-owned factories were in China and Qian Qian in the early 1990s.
Director Wang Yichun said frankly that Zhongyuan Aircraft Factory is actually very similar to Gansu Baiyin Factory, and What’s in the Black might also be a world in the eyes of a girl who grew up in the family area of Baiyin Factory.
In the film, the old lady in the nursing home sighed in the chat, "I don’t have to leave this door until I die, there is everything here." It is the epitome of this kind of state-owned factory small society.
Supporting kindergartens, primary schools, high schools, supply and marketing cooperatives, hospitals, entertainment stations and auditoriums are all available, and everyone’s birth, illness, food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, work and entertainment are realized in this narrow geographical space.
The accents of the characters in the film from all over the world are also a major feature of the state-owned factory. Whether it is the Shaanxi dialect of the Chinese teacher or the Tangshan dialect led by the Public Security Bureau, people feel very cordial.
Many films reflecting the 1990s are also set in state-owned factories, such as Nezha the Girl, which is also a youth growth film, and The Red Suit, which directly hit the tide of laid-off workers in state-owned factories in the 1990s, and so on.
In the 1990s, China’s economy fell into a trough, and state-owned factories were laid off. For a time, social cases occurred frequently, and many major cases that shocked the whole country occurred in this special historical period. The placard of "Strike hard against criminal offences" in the film is also a special symbol of the period of "Strike hard".
Wang Yichun said frankly that the film drew lessons from many major cases that shocked the whole country at that time, such as Nie Shubin case, Huge case and so on, and he became a half-criminal expert himself. Although these cases did not really appear in her life, the fear and sense of crisis brought by news reports at that time were still fresh in her memory.
Director Wang Yichun once said that every director’s first film seems to be used to commemorate his youth. Jiang Wen is so, so is she.
Wang Yichun, born in 1977, happens to be the same age as the heroine in the film. I believe this is not just a coincidence. Although the director tried his best to restore the memory of the 1990s in detail, the biggest highlight of the film is that it is not limited to symbolic expression, but tells a story about growth and enlightenment with his heart. Let girls who have groped or are growing up in the fog find their own "90" memories.
What’s in the place? There are flowers that can’t be distinguished, passions that are eager to move, cold-blooded killer, selfishness and indifference, and clumsy and kind people who stubbornly light a small lamp for you … …