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Author | Weinika

Editor | Li Chunhui

"How can a person live alone and yet not feel lonely?" When Lalifa, played by Zhu Zhu, said this line, "Negatives Make Positive" quickly became a romance film. It is a movie for people with contemporary urban syndrome.

On the surface, "Negatives Make Positives" tells the love story of Huang Zhenkai and Li Xiaole. In fact, it is more like a mirror, reflecting the psychology of each of us, analyzing the cautious views of contemporary people on love, social life and even life - actively giving up dreams, being cautious in the world, and disdaining love. This is the doctrine of the mean in the new era and the survival wisdom of young people.

Love, in particular, is the first to be abandoned as a "non-essential". The Internet has given rise to weak and shallow social interaction among contemporary young people. Huang Zhenkai, played by Zhu Yilong, is a typical indifferent person, while Li Xiaole, played by Qiu Tian, ​​is a typical intense person. In the movie, the two of them fell in love in a very new way. You can say that they are "partners" who dare not establish a relationship, but you can clearly see two hearts that want to get close but are afraid of being bound.

The difficulty of adapting to completely different individuals, the exhaustion of life that can no longer bear the burden of love... "Negatives Make Positive" does not use the melodramatic plot of the eight o'clock drama, but uses fragmented methods and emotions to reveal these "reasons why I can't fall in love". But love is still growing secretly, surging before people realize it, and finally achieves a kind of "redemption" -

It is because we are all ordinary people, living ordinary lives day after day, that we need the transcendence of love to illuminate this gray journey. The moment we fall in love, we have the greatest legend that two people can create. Believe in the happiness of this moment, believe that life is worthwhile, and believe in your own strength. Just like the male protagonist in the movie, the passion of love also ignites the passion of life, and finally breaks through the established "script".

It can be said that the story of "Negatives Make Positives" is about love, but it is not limited to love. It does not have a long and winding journey, nor does it have a heart-wrenching oath. It only discusses the nature of love and gives a pioneering interpretation of love and sex.

Director Wen Shipei, who has always had an avant-garde style of film, played with more eccentricity this time, even incorporating aliens into a film about urban workers and their love. Wang Yitong's cameo makes the whole film look like "Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department" meets "The Truman Show". Of course, what it presents is not completely realistic. "Negatives Make Positives" is more inclined to make a "good-looking" movie and is infinitely close to the emotional truth.

Undefinable love in the new era

How to avoid having the protagonist fall into the "love brain" criticism is a difficult problem in the creation of romance films and dramas today. "Negatives Make Positives" provides a brand new idea - let the male and female protagonists have a very new love and establish a new type of independent love relationship.

Huang Zhenkai, played by Zhu Yilong, is a hardworking and conscientious social animal on the surface. But deep down, he is extremely eager to break the established framework of life and put an end to the trivial and boring days. Huang Zhenkai's situation is a true portrayal of every working cow. He wants to fight against this endless boredom and tiredness, but he can only dye his hair blue to protest.

Qiu Tian plays Li Xiaole, a freelancer who keeps changing jobs and switches between different identities in front of different people. She wants to buy freedom with enough money, but she has no money and is homeless. She is a new urban nomad, a young idealist with nowhere to go.

The love between Huang Zhenkai and Li Xiaole is like a down-to-earth worker meeting a free spirit, which produces a magical chemical reaction. The movie uses the metaphor of aliens to perfectly interpret the "resonance" of love in an instant. Li Xiaole is the only one who sees the aliens around Huang Zhenkai. The moment Huang Zhenkai learned about it, it was as if the two people from the alien planet suddenly exchanged secret codes, thus forming a unique connection.

The black box of love has always been a difficult point to interpret in romance films. The two common love models of love at first sight and love over time seem to be losing their effectiveness and are difficult for contemporary young people to believe. The "resonance" in "Negatives Make Positives" provides a new way to interpret the mechanism of love. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson's definition of love mentions that love is a series of tiny moments of positive resonance. When love occurs, there is a kind of resonance similar to physics.

What is more avant-garde about "Negatives Make Positives" is that it boldly presents a new type of love relationship. After the two became close, Li Xiaole told Huang Zhenkai, "You are free, and I am free too." This sentence reveals the love view of contemporary young people. Love and sex are based on two independent individuals, and there is no need for one to pay for the other.

This reminds me of the bride's speech at a recent wedding I attended, "Today we are neither getting married nor being married. We are two independent individuals. We don't talk about love or forever. We don't need vows or expectations, because the way we are now is enough."

Love is too short, life is too long, this is the problem that contemporary marriage cannot overcome. "Negative Negatives Make Positive" presents a new type of love relationship, where men and women do not use traditional and material concepts to restrain each other, forming an irreplaceable "partner" relationship. Two people with "negative energy" resonate with each other, and together they are "negative negatives make positive", healing each other, proving each other, and fighting against the boredom and tiredness, storms and hardships of life.

Trendy and poetic

Zhu Yilong said that participating in "Negatives Make Positives" was an adventure for him, just like the theme song he sang for the movie - "People who originally lived in the Arctic chose to take risks."

For the audience, watching "Negatives Make Positives" is also an adventure. Director Wen Shipei challenges the traditional aesthetic model of romantic films with his trendy visual style and poetic content expression. This is a brand new viewing experience. The audience who can "resonate" with the movie is like having a real and psychedelic dream, and experiencing a brain-opening adventure like "Rick and Morty".

Stendhal said that listening to music and being accustomed to fantasy can easily make people feel love. The Hong Kong love films of the 1990s, which are regarded as classics, are well aware of this principle, often seen in the protagonist wearing a headset, the fantasy monologue talking to himself, the blurred lighting of KTV style, and the picture editing of MV style.

Fashion is a cycle, and this set of retro videotape aesthetics has been revived in "Negatives Make Positives". Zhu Yilong with blue hair and Qiu Tian with red hair are photographed with a different charm. It has to be said that "Negatives Make Positives" is a face-control friendly movie. Every actor in the movie shows a charm that is different from the past and even beyond expectations.

Zhu Zhu plays the role of Lalifa, who is independent, sober, open-minded and tolerant, and can easily navigate various social occasions. Jiang Qiming once again plays a migrant worker from Hong Kong. Unlike the "scumbag" in "My Altay", this time, he gives Li Xiaole the love he can.

The trendy visual style of "Negatives Make Positives" is wrapped in poetic content. In order to resonate with the audience, more and more love films have incorporated realistic topics, such as emotional value, material value, career and love choices, etc. But in fact, what we lack is not the sobriety of calculation, but the passion of falling in love. The world of images should provide such a passion to awaken the overly calm heart. When social topics are increasingly inclined to betrothal gifts, conditions, and contributions, what can most impress the audience is the pure and passionate love itself.

"Negatives Make Positives" has found the long-lost poetry of love and rebuilt the transcendental space of love. Love is deep and lasting without knowing where it comes from. This classical expression of love has been given contemporary meaning by director Wen Shipei. According to the secular love script, Li Xiaole appeared in Huang Zhenkai's life, but it was just a flash in the pan. Li Xiaole may become Huang Zhenkai's unforgettable, but she will not be Huang Zhenkai's emotional destination. In the end, Huang Zhenkai will go on a blind date and find a good girl to live with. But Huang Zhenkai tore up the secular script and changed the trajectory of his life, just to wait for a reunion with Li Xiaole.

The director used an imaginative cyber brain hole to show Huang Zhenkai's rebelliousness of tearing up the script. Huang Zhenkai made a scene at the "Galaxy Studios", which gave people a passionate feeling that my fate is in my own hands, and it was love that awakened the courage of ordinary people to fight against life.

In the poetic love space of "Negatives Make Positives", there are also elements of absurd comedy. This is very similar to the treatment of love in Billy Wilder's movies, which tells the true meaning of life and love in a way that is not too tiring. Li Xiaole is like the male and female protagonists in "Some Like It Hot" who are full of lies. After going through all kinds of things, the two people who told the truth reached a reconciliation with the words "Nobody's perfect" - when sincere feelings appear, we are willing to lose our judgment.

A romantic film for every generation

When people talk about romance movies nowadays, they easily think of the "Ex-Files" series, which was relatively successful at the box office, and the youth romance movies that are produced in large quantities every year. If we trace back further, there are also Stephen Chow's nonsensical romance movies and Wong Kar-wai's literary romance movies. With the changes of the times, especially young people "don't believe in love", what should a romance movie that keeps pace with the times look like?

"Negatives Make Positives" shows the evolution of the genre of romance movies. On the surface, its story belongs to an urban romance movie, but it also has elements of science fiction, fantasy, and the second dimension. I would like to call it the most rebellious romance movie of the contemporary era.

Although seemingly telling a love story, "Negatives Make Positives" uses an "anti-type" approach. Rather than saying that Wen Shipei made an abstract love film, it is better to say that he is a master of deconstruction of love films. This deconstruction mode is very similar to the imagination of contemporary Internet users.

For example, in the scene where Huang Zhenkai and Li Xiaole fell in love, Huang Zhenkai saw aliens deliberately creating an atmosphere and blowing pink bubbles. It was like the second dimension in anime, giving the romance film a "inside and outside" perspective, which was full of fun.

The second scene where the pink bubble appeared again was when Huang Zhenkai met his blind date. But this time, Huang Zhenkai did not follow the atmosphere created by the aliens to have a love story with his blind date.

The same mechanism, but the protagonist has a different reaction. It is very similar to the author's book-traveling story in the online novel. When the author travels to the protagonist of his own novel, he instantly has different feelings, completely changes his previous writing intention, and wants to rewrite the fate of the character. In "Negative Negatives Make Positive", Huang Zhenkai is like a screenwriter who finds that the story is too cliché and begins to rebel against the omnipresent alien director. The scene of making a scene at Galaxy Studios is like Truman in "The Truman Show" discovering that he is being monitored, fighting wits and courage with the reality show crew, and finally finding the door to reality.

Huang Zhenkai didn't want to follow the plot that his family expected, and at that moment the audience in front of the screen seemed to be reflected. If we look at this film with an old-fashioned perspective, we will hope that Huang Zhenkai has an ending that conforms to reality. But if we put down our burdens and dream with Huang Zhenkai, we will open up a new world. "Negatives Make Positive" presents love in a deconstructive way, which is not only an innovation of romance films, but also sublimates the core of romance films and returns to the essence of romance films. Classic romance films often have commonalities: people see themselves clearly through love and re-anchor their lives.

It is these passionate or silent loves and love stories that prevent us from becoming complete, world-weary realists, and still give us the courage to love and dream. After all, if we cannot live thoroughly once, then every day of the rest of our lives is just a reprieve.