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Text | Linghu Boguang

August 10th is the Chinese Valentine's Day.Zhu YilongNew filmTwo negatives equal a positive》 was released.

However, the box office performance of this movie on the first day of its release was not good. After watching it, I found that this movie was similar to "Escape from the 21st Century" and "Stop and Go》 can be considered a type of movie. It is not the genre that is similar, but the directors’ eras, upbringing and living environment that make these three movies similar in certain temperaments.

The director of 21st Century, Li Yang, and the director of Stop and Go, Long Fei, were both born in 1981. The director of Negative Negatives Make a Positive, Wen Shipei, was born in 1989. 21st Century is about the childhood and youth growth environment of mainland teenagers born in the 1980s, including the games, animations, campus life and the middle school dreams of goddesses at that time. Stop and Go is about the urban social animals returning to their hometowns to lie down.

"Negatives Make Positives" is a study of the 80s-style Hong Kong urban romance films of Wong Kar-wai.

Strictly speaking, these three films are not very popular in Europe, the United States and Japan, but they are already quite mainstream genre films.

Because Stop and Go is relatively literary and pure, it has the best reputation and the worst box office. However, 21st Century and Negatives Make Positive have some problems in the movies themselves, and in the current domestic environment, they seem to be alternative genre films that go against the market mainstream, which is quite interesting.

Ps: This article contains a certain amount of spoilers for "Negatives Make Positive".

Some people think it is a masterpiece, while others think it is a bad movie? Why is Zhu Yilong's new movie

"Negatives Make Positives" is one of the rare relatively adult urban romance films in China. Although it is not so extreme, it at least has that flavor.There is a controversial point in this film, which is the alien love story line. You can temporarily regard it as a form of expression. Not to abandon this form, but to temporarily ignore it and only look at the movie's personality settings, character creation, story plot, background details, and emotional treatment, etc.

I think "Negatives Make Positive" is one of the very few films in mainland China that has captured an urban love story from hometown to urbanization in recent years. Although it has its shortcomings and the format is a bit mixed, it is no longer a pseudo-realistic urban drama, nor is it a middle-aged love film about the post-80s and post-90s generation who miss their youth, nor is it a campus love story.

The characters and plot of the movie are actually very simple. The male protagonist is covered with the skin of a person who almost died at birth, but after being rescued, he can see the skin of an alien. He and the female protagonist are both urban men and women who came from poor families when they were young, had a bumpy growth, and worked hard to live in the big city.

The protagonist Huang Zhenkai obviously had problems in his parents' family. His father cheated on his wife and was stabbed several times by another woman's husband and almost died.

The heroine Li Xiaole's father is a qigong swindler. She is a little proud of being respected. Her father promised her that Noah would go to Argentina to eat chocolate. As a result, her father was arrested and jailed for fraud, and her mother died. She was first sent to her grandmother (who also died), and then to her uncle to grow up.

The male protagonist is a typical social animal in a contemporary Chinese metropolis. He actually likes to draw comics, just like the one in Wu Tiao Ren.Mao TaoA friend of mine (who likes literature) ends up doing a job he doesn't like and is made difficult by his boss. Although there is not much in the beginning of the movie, there are indeed some performances of office workers.

The heroine's life is even more difficult, with various identities, such as Li Xiaole, Li Li, Li Manting, Japanese name, English name. She changes various jobs, such as hairdresser, celebrity agent, masseur, etc. (may be inaccurate), she is always learning, speaking various dialects and languages. The actor Qiu Tian is from Chongqing, and the movie is set in Sichuan and Chongqing. She speaks Cantonese, Henan dialect, Northeastern dialect, Japanese, English, etc.

In fact, according to the heroine's personality and her function in modern urban society, if it were a European, American, Japanese, or Hong Kong movie, she would probably be a marginal character. It cannot be said that she makes a living by selling her body or emotions, but at least she certainly doesn't care in this regard.

The beginning of the movie does have that meaning. There is a plot where the hero and heroine tell each other about their first sexual experience while being filmed by aliens. Neither the hero nor the heroine's sexual partners are given too many frontal shots.

The hero is a beautiful older sister, but because of his parents' marriage, family and emotional relationships, the hero not only does not understand love and feelings, he even feels guilty about "sex". The camera also gives a very typical stage play hero having sex and then running to the cage to vent.

The heroine might be a smoking social person. According to her recollections and description, she remembered the room number, the six clothes hangers on the pole, a dead cockroach in the corner, and even that the lady at the service desk was very friendly, but she just couldn't remember the man with whom she had sex for the first time in her life.

However, the description of the heroine's job is relatively restrained (still considering the market, or something). The heroine is not a very promiscuous person. Although she is short of money, she often works part-time to earn money, such as meeting the second maleJiang QimingThey worked in a convenience store at the time, but they spent all their money saving cats, so they both quit and worked in customer service.

The heroine couldn't save much money (and her father was sick), so she couldn't afford to buy a house at 200,000 yuan per square meter.

As a result, he was scolded by his boss for selling a house and he cried. When she went to comfort him, they both cried together.

The heroine is a girl who has obviously suffered family trauma during her teenage years and has a hard life in a big city. Although she is full of lies, she is not a bad person and is quite optimistic. She is a very interesting girl in terms of personality and life (but the part with the rich man is very interesting).Zhu ZhuThey met and became friends. She owed him money and ran away without asking for anything, which was not very grounding).

In short, the male and female protagonists are the infatuated man and resentful woman in the big city, just like the lines in the movie: the male protagonist chose to be numb, while the female protagonist chose to disguise.

Compared with the Chinese-language high-grossing romance films, "Negatives Make Positives" is still good in these aspects.

I think that the character setting and background of "Negatives Make Positives" are relatively down-to-earth, and the emotional details are also very delicate. Especially although the director is obviously a fan of Wong Kar-wai, the movie has learned and imitated many aspects of "Chungking Express" and "Fallen Angels》《Blueberry Nights》。

This generation of young mainland directors, whether in terms of art, light and shadow, or soundtrack, all of the emotional processing resulting from this is different from mainstream romance films. I think many scenes are well-shot and quite interesting, which I have never seen in mainland films.

For example, after the two people have sex, their feelings gradually heat up and they begin to talk about their past childhood life. The heroine was waiting for her father at the football field in her childhood (her father had been arrested that day, and she had been waiting, and was not discovered until the evening). The adult hero enters the life scene of the childhood heroine, and the two play football together, and the hero helps her beat the teacher she doesn't like.

Because of the male protagonist's family relationship, the adult female protagonist enters the life of the childhood male protagonist, makes him take off his shoes, throws his shoes away barefoot, and the two of them start playing happily.

If it is the current mainstream domestic romance films, youth films and realistic life films.

For example, in a realistic life film, a pair of rural parents are invited to go to the big city to have a blood-sucking quarrel with the male and female protagonists; in a romance film, a former male and female protagonist are invited to have a quarrel and fight with each other, causing drama.

In addition to the description of sex, there is also an explanation of love. The heroine didn't mention it, but the hero's father had an affair with another woman, and the woman's husband came over and stabbed his father several times and wanted to burn himself. Then the movie asked in the form of an interview: What is love?

Several elders answered the question of what love is, and the answers were different, which profoundly affected the male protagonist's view of love.

In general, you don't have to treat the male and female protagonists as a serious urban couple in love. They are both social animals with a not-so-smooth childhood, and they meet a versatile female protagonist who also has a not-so-smooth childhood family. The two of them also rent a house, then they fall in love, then have sex, and then get together.

Huang Zhenkai worked from sunrise to sunset. Li Xiaole hid during the day and went out at night, but their destination was always the rented house. They ate, slept, watched TV, and made love. Their lives overlapped with each other, yet seemed unrelated. Intertwined desires, confused emotions, and a bustling city, the two gradually began to understand each other. The heroine ran away because she owed money.

I won’t spoil the rest of the story here, as the movie treats it as another storyline about the struggle against fate in an alien love story.

Three films in a row, young directors from the mainland have risen, but not yet fully risen

At this time, the problem of the movie also came up, or the most controversial part appeared, that is, the movie used the format of an alien love show. The male protagonist almost died when he was born, and after being rescued, he could see the aliens and even resisted the aliens to film. According to the original script of the aliens, the female protagonist would die in a car accident, and the male protagonist would marry a girl he didn't love, and think of Li Xiaole when he died of old age.

But the male protagonist began to resist with all his strength, and actually succeeded in the resistance at the "Galaxy Studios" and rescued the female protagonist.

The male protagonist quits his job and travels to Hong Kong, Japan, and Burinos Aires, Argentina (all places that are often seen in Wong Kar-wai's films). I don't think this is very interesting, because most art films deal with this. He quits his job and goes on the road, travels abroad, and finally returns to his hometown to give birth, and then unexpectedly reunites with the female protagonist.

If you want to interpret this part about alien love, it will be a bit strange. What is fate? What is affection and love?

Did the male protagonist successfully change his fate? Why didn't the aliens take revenge? The movie didn't clearly explain that the aliens were the male protagonist's fantasy? In the end, it was drawn as a cartoon, but it was not obvious that it was fake. The format of the alien love variety show was originally strange. In the latter part of the movie, there was a tribute to Chaplin and a kung fu fight with aliens (these two scenes were very distracting)

If you interpret the alien line it's a bit weird, but if you don't it takes up too much of the story.

To be honest,I don't quite understand why the director added the "alien love story" part? I think most of the controversy is focused on this part. Wouldn't it be too much like Wong Kar-wai if he didn't add this part?

But as far as I know, although this director's camera language is obviously learned and imitated by Wong Kar-wai, Wong Kar-wai's films do not have much grounding in reality. The male and female protagonists in Wong Kar-wai's films do not look rich, but they have never worried about money (except for "Ashes of Time》Hong Qi).

This movie is just the opposite. The heroine also has a line: "Money is almost equal to freedom."

If there is no alien plot, I still think that "Negatives Make Positives" is pretty good from the perspective of a modern Chinese urban romance (although the film is very complex in terms of light and shadow and form, it is not artistic at all). In order to tell the story of sex and love, confusion and emotion, childhood injuries and urban alienation against fate, the core director of this film used aliens to tell the audience:For love to happen, it does not require them to be the same person, it only requires them to have the need for love.

Now that the alien movie has been added, it’s a little hard to describe. Is it a problem with the director’s ability? Or is it because of commercial reasons?

In any case, the film's presentation is a bit complicated, and judging from the box office, the audience does not seem to accept it. The plot of "21st Century" is also weak, but the core of the second-year film is consistent, and it has a fixed audience. Why is the emergency evaluation of "Stop and Go" high? It is probably equivalent to a modern life film without the "alien line". The processing is also literary, so the reputation is high, the box office is poor, but the fans have high evaluations.

If "Negatives Make Positive" didn't have the alien line, its reputation and box office would have been better than "Stop and Go". But now - it's hard to describe. There is no audience for this kind of alternative romance film in the mainland.

Compared with the previous high-grossing romance films, it is not melodramatic, has no major plot conflicts, and is even gaudy and inexplicable. If you look at it from the perspective of avant-garde romance films or literary romance films, I think many movie fans are now scolding it as a poor imitation of Wong Kar-wai's work!

ps1: In recent years, there have been a number of films directed by young mainland directors that are quite to my taste, because they are obviously different from the stereotyped Chinese-language films of the past. There are more forms, more types, and more attempts at expression and style, but most of them just lack the flavor, what a pity!

ps2: The binary opposition of online public opinion is so serious that it is unbearable to watch. Movies and TV series are either masterpieces or bad movies! As long as the box office is bad, it is a concept. Either Gege is the best, or your Gege is a concept. Few people really love movies. Movies are actually concepts!