In the afternoon, I watched Hou Mak's "The Story of Autumn" on the balcony. It is still a simple story, but the movie's one muted picture and characters' dialogues convey real and delicate emotions. It seems difficult for a woman in her twilight years to reap the benefits of love. Even Marjorie herself in the movie doesn't believe in it, a forty-five year old widow, who has difficulty communicating with her grown up children, and who stays in the countryside to take care of her own vineyard, has a longing for love in her heart, but feels that it's no longer possible to get it, and Elizabeth, her happily married best friend, flirted with her, saying that she was waiting for a man to fall down from the sky. In the warmth and concern of her best friend she finally reaps the benefits of belated love. Inserted beyond this line is a meeting between a man and a woman arranged for her by Luo Xin, the girlfriend of Marjorie's son, which scrutinizes young people's attitude towards relationships from another angle.
At the beginning of the play, Marjorie and Elizabeth's rambling daily conversations, seemingly uninteresting but hidden ambiguities, Marjorie and Elizabeth's conversations with Jaikha, Marjorie and her son's girlfriend Rohin's conversations, and Rohin's conversations with her own philosophy teacher (an ambiguous ex-boyfriend), Houmai is always in these conversations to express the characters, touching the depths of human nature.
Elizabeth, with a happy marriage, successful career, noble temperament, gentle character, however, she also has a heart-thumping moment, watching her daughter and son-in-law together when the envy of the look, the face of the Jieha a moment of confusion, to fulfill the others left behind when the faint regret.
The role of Marjorie is the expression of the complex emotions of middle-aged single women, as if by the rough polishing of time, but still sharp as the beginning, no longer attached to the sweetness of youth, do not care to cover up the traces of the years, with a distant trance look and sharp eyes, stick to their spiritual high ground. Like the wine she personally brewed, fresh and heavy coexist, seven or eight years, it is a good old wine!
Middle age is indeed an awkward age for women, and there is a segment on the Internet that teases this age, "Talking about love is old, talking about death is still early". In the Chinese cultural context, women in their forties (or even after thirty years of age) suffer from the double discrimination of gender and age, this age of the woman if still longing for love will be ridiculed, said too naive and not pragmatic are considered to be underneath the mouth of mercy. The middle-aged Yishu once laughed at herself in an essay, "The secretary asked one day, 'Do you wear jeans too? And then she asked, 'Are you still planning to get married, Yishabe? This shows that in her eyes, I am a middle-aged woman. She doesn't know that middle-aged women also have visions and even dreams."
? Middle-aged women and even older women, can not be ignored is that they still have their own emotional needs, delicate soft and deep feelings. Watching the "fall story" also incidentally recalled a British film "waiting for the love of the girl", which had been seen on the plane on the journey. The movie is about old sisters who live a lonely and quiet life in a remote and silent town. They save a young man, a violinist, who is unconscious on the beach after a boat accident. As a result, the sister develops an unnameable affection for him. Seventy years old, never having loved before, falling in love but not knowing what to do, she silently loves and silently lets go. "The gentleman born I am old", the last flourish of life bloom, so warm, beautiful, but infinitely sad. Maintaining the rationality of not crossing the thunderbolt, but can not help the feelings of youthful budding, British watercolor-like colors and images, suffused with a faint bitterness and delicate sadness. Qian Zhongshu once interpreted Li Shangyin's "Jin Se", "this love can wait to become a reminiscence, just at that time has been confused", "said the dust of the past looking back, disappointment touched ten thousand, Gu when the time of the line of music, that is, already feel the impermanence of the world, and the sand turning candle, gloomy in a good dream easy to wake up, the feast must be dispersed." After middle age, it's like fighting a hopeless war with youth, from resistance to total retreat, and finally all the troops were destroyed. Entering the middle-aged woman, the child gradually grows up away from the appearance of the body no longer have the advantage of youth, placed under the secular values, in the relationship between the sexes is more and more become a disregarded group. Middle-aged women also seem to have no confidence in love, just a heartbeat known reality of the impossibility, not to be recalled in the end has been clear. I'd rather not have, but I don't want to end up in a mess. Unless you meet a true love, standing firmly behind her. Just like the "fall story" in the Jieha, not because of the repeated moods of Marjorie, temperamental and stop, but choose to decisively turn the car around, chasing after the past, before harvesting the feast of grapes.
The end of "Autumn Story", the garden lawn, everyone is dancing, how happy and at ease ah, so that people suddenly moved to the corner of the eye wet. This is the charm of Hou Mak's movie - no need to sensationalize, the emotion is in the middle.