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Unexpectedly, a "Guangzhou movie" suddenly became popular.

Douban 2.6.

But it was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the Berlin Film Festival.

What monsters?

Is this the rhythm that Bi Zhifei is suddenly recognized by the international film industry?

In the spirit of watching the excitement, Sir will talk about this legendary "masterpiece" today.

Tea of ​​Love

Black Tea

The director is a well-known figure, Abderrahmane Sissako, who was nominated for the Cannes main competition and the Oscars for his film "Timbuktu".

The leading actor is the familiar Zhang Zhen...his brother, Zhang Han.

The story is about an African girl who "escaped from marriage" and came to Guangzhou, China, where she discussed tea art with a tea shop owner, and they got to know each other and fell in love.

Everything looks normal, right?

So even if the story is not well told, it should be valuable for us to look at Guangzhou through the lens of international directors, right?

But.

When Sir opened the movie with this mentality, he unexpectedly received a critical hit of 10,000 points.

You are foreigners.

Are they all like this?

01

Let’s first take a look at Guangzhou as viewed through the lens of a famous foreign director.

A lively snack street.

A large number of luggage stores, barber shops, and Middle Eastern clothing wholesale stores are always filled with a steady stream of black people.

This is where?

The film doesn’t name any names, only saying that this is in Guangzhou and that the street is called “Chocolate Street.”

Sir searched it and found that this might be Baohan Street.

A large number of foreigners live on this two to three hundred meter long street. It is said that in one community alone, there are more than 800 registered Africans.

If you accidentally walk into here.

Seeing black people all over the streets, you might have the illusion that you have gone abroad.

but.

Just when Sir was about to mobilize his memory to verify these street scenes, he was in a daze.

Why do the police patrolling the streets look like this?

Why do all those who use RMB speak Taiwanese Mandarin?

Why is a watermelon sold for 66 yuan per piece? (What kind of selling method is this?)

Why are there only two or three scenes here and there?

In the interval of self-doubt, Sir did a search and found out that although this movie tells a story about Guangzhou, it was filmed in Taiwan, China.

That is to say.

The director was clearly filming in Taiwan, but pretended it was in Guangzhou.

This "forced" substitution is certainly understandable.

only.

If the filming location is moved, but the director designs the scene without knowing the details and relying on knowledge he does not understand, is that another kind of arrogance?

So you can see a lot of "Stereotype"The bridge segment.

For example, a scene.

The black heroine Aya greets the counter girl in the store.

What are you eating?

Eating dumplings. (A stereotype of Chinese people)

What’s the filling?

Celery, cabbage (it’s called “cauliflower” in mainland China) and carrots.

Feel sorry.

If she said, "I'm drinking boat porridge, eating braised sausage, and eating beef offal noodles."

Sir thinks there is no problem.

Even if a Cantonese wants to eat dumplings, they will eat mushrooms and water chestnuts, or at least coriander and beef.

whatever.

The director's stereotype of China does not stop there.

Also, for example

Aya said that she sees her neighbor cooking for his wife every day.

Then, Aya’s boss Wang Cai (played by Zhang Han) said that he must be from Shanghai, and all Shanghai men are like this.

A stick to kill men from other parts of China.

More, such as

Showing a marriage scene.

If you want to find a husband for your daughter in the park, all you need to do is take a photo with the gender, name, photo and weight written on it.

There are only two words to describe this profession: sales.

Is it so careless?

Among them, the most difficult thing for Sir to understand is the core of the film:

Tea tasting.

It can be said that the whole movie is based on tea culture. It is an important prop for communication between the male and female protagonists, but how does the director understand tea?

In the movie, Aya has only two opinions about tea.

"smell good."

“(╯▽╰ )It smells so good~~ah.”

“It tastes good.”

Men also have another new interpretation for drinking tea: tasting tea. Since “tasting” has three sips, we should drink a cup of tea in three sips.

well.

Seeing this, you can only sigh:

whatever.

I shouldn't have had any expectations.

02

But honestly speaking, if you say that the director is deliberately slandering China, it seems to be too picky.

Because from beginning to end, what the director tried to present was actuallyChina and Africa are one family, is the understanding and friendship between the two peoples.

My husband is Chinese

Even so, it looks like a high-level black.

Why?

It is still related to "not seeking to understand too much".

one example.

The director wanted to emphasize the friendship between China and Africa.

It shows that the new generation of Chinese have changed their previous discrimination against Africans.

We also have to specially arrange for unfriendly voices towards African Americans.

Moreover, it should be said by men of the older generation.

"There is a photography exhibition about them now, which puts them together with animals. Some people say this is not good, but I think it's good."

What kind of picture is it?

The director even magnified it.

Can this kind of photo, which looks particularly "insulting to Africa", be exhibited in a photography exhibition?

I didn’t, I wasn’t, don’t talk nonsense.

Another example.

It was the same quarrel.

It can be seen that the director is quite supportive of the Belt and Road Initiative.

However, in order to explore the value of this policy, the film also arranges a simple debate.

Then a strange sentence appeared:

“You can’t build the system we’re hyping until you open it up to other people.”

This kind of colloquial use of derogatory words as complimentary words, or that kind of half-baked Mandarin expression, can be found everywhere in the movie.

Why does this happen?

Could it really be a high-level black?

When Sir was looking up information, he found that the lead actor Zhang Han said this:

“The director spent a lot of time chatting with the actors and discussing the characters, rather than rehearsing the script in the traditional academic way.

The reason behind this is that many sections of the director's script only have scene outlines, and the specific dialogues are often not finalized until the day of shooting."

If we follow this approach, there will be great uncertainty: facing the uncontrollability and unfamiliarity of an unknown culture, the director will inevitably fall into a rut, which is "making up stories".

This kind of improvisational approach requires profound film control capabilities.

If he is not familiar with the character settings, or if he is confident in the scheduling of actors.

A casual performance is a disaster.

The actors also have to deal with translation between Chinese and French. After receiving the Chinese script translated from French, the actors often have to translate it back to discuss with the director because it is not colloquial enough.

Therefore, this effect is bound to occur.

Did you find it?

This is actually a typical case of Ye Gong liking dragons.

The director is interested in Chinese culture, but his interest is limited to the stereotyped and conceptual Chinese culture.

Do you want him to really understand Chinese culture?

He is not that interested.

The result was that countless Chinese audiences left the Berlin premiere in anger, and some even felt that this was not just brainless stupidity.

It is a baseless and unwarranted assumption of bad things.

I can only say that when I heard the applause after the world premiere, the horror and fear even overwhelmed my disgust for the film. This hellish perspective can have so many followers, which makes me wonder if the world really sees China this way? China's geography, society, gender, family, and politics are all treated indiscriminately, like a diary written by a director who has just been in China for a month and hates China.

03

In fact, there are many excellent works abroad that tell stories about Chinese culture.

Even if some of them are considered "insulting to China".

But if you look closely, you will find that there are many valuable things in it.

For example, "Don't Tell Her".

It doesn't take much time to describe what a Chinese family should be like.

Just a conversation like "How many wontons do you want to eat?" is enough to illustrate the Chinese family's desire to control their children.

My daughter wanted five, but my mother said that was too few;

Want a dozen? No, I think 10 is enough for you.

In the end, my daughter had no choice but to say, OK, accept it.

How do you face the gap and embarrassment between yourself, as a Chinese American, and Chinese society and culture?

It's still a dialogue.

The hotel staff asked her which life she was more accustomed to, life in China or in the United States?

no the same.

How is it different?

I can't explain it clearly.

But in the end, the staff did not give up.

The final conclusion is, "I think you are more accustomed to American life."

Yes, it is this kind of inexplicable embarrassment and forced identification in certain aspects that makes people feel the existence of some kind of crack at this moment.

And this is why Sir thinks it is well filmed.

And what about "Tea of ​​Love"?

As a "Chinese-language film" made for Westerners, its story is told in a messy way and is fundamentally bad.

So much so that imdb only scored 5.2 points.

It’s much higher than Douban, but it’s also classified as a bad movie.

And if the film was intended for Chinese people to watch, but the Guangzhou in the camera was the director's "imaginary" Guangzhou, it was not well done in terms of appearance.

Moreover, as a native African, the director wanted to look at the African community in Guangzhou from an African perspective.

Although Aya should have been a "stranger" staying in this country, she did not feel like she was leaving her hometown at all.

Instead, when her friend chased away a toy vendor.

I will say righteously that if you are unhappy here, you can go back to your country.

All perspectives are rotten.

So here comes the question.

Why is it worthless but can enter the main competition in Berlin?

Is it because foreigners love to criticize China?

Obviously not.

Perhaps there is only one reason for this result.

Story theme.

Whether it is Berlin, Cannes or even Venice, it is obvious that the trend of world film today is no longer artistic creation (which has indeed stagnated for many years), butPay attention to vulnerable groups。

For example, the female theme that has lasted for many years.

Or the racial, immigrant, sexual minorities, etc. that have become increasingly prominent in recent years.

Regardless of the quality, all film festivals always try to have a "complete" range of these themes to appear to be "keeping up with the times" and not becoming outdated.

And the black people in Guangzhou.

The combination of both races and immigrants, coupled with the mysterious Eastern culture, clearly meets this demand.

So instead of looking at whether it is well filmed.

It is better to say that the film selectors only look at whether it is "correct".

This is of course a tragedy.

Especially for us, when we see a group of Taiwanese pretending to be Guangzhou people in a movie theater in a foreign country and telling a stereotypical Chinese story, we can't help but feel angry about being misunderstood.

But at the same time.

What is perhaps even more sad is that we clearly have such an international subject matter, but why have our creators always turned a blind eye to it?

where is the problem?

have no idea.

But Sir looked at the foreign woman on the screen who could communicate in Mandarin and demonstrated how to play with chopsticks.

I can't help but worry that this situation will continue.

The reason is very simple.

Just like how we used the use of knives and forks as a plot in movies in the 1980s and 1990s, what is reflected here is actually the curiosity of misunderstanding and the imagination of alienation.

But we have long passed this stage.

And movies like "Tea of ​​Love" still remain here after decades.

This shows what?

This shows that for many years, we and the outside world are still at the stage where others are unwilling to understand us, and we are also refusing anyone's understanding.

Sir doesn't know what the future holds.

But there is one thing.

At least in film creation, Sir still hopes that we can shoot the themes around us ourselves.

It's not necessarily to keep up with the trend of this world.

It’s more about.

We should not give up our right to speak to those irrelevant fantasies.

The pictures in this article are from the Internet

Assistant editor: Oda Furangqie