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This may be the summer season'The worst situation'A movie.

The film has the top domestic entertainment star Zhu Yilong, and his supporting actors are Jiang Qiming and Chen Minghao, and the film's producer is the famous director Ning Hao.

But from the preview to the release, it gives people the feeling that“Struggling on the line between life and death”。

The box office speaks volumes.

After four days of release, "Negatives Make Positive" has accumulated a box office of 56 million, of which nearly 40 million was concentrated on the first day.

The reviews online make people frown.

"It's a very sexual contraction."

"The whining of an elderly Shamatte man without any reason."

“It’s really ugly and a waste of time.”

“I will never be deceived by domestic romance films again.”

"The director is shooting an extra-long MV, which is a waste of the actors."

However, among these reviews, there are also many five-star reviews.

“This is the movie.”

“A very cinematic movie.”

It can be seen that this is another movie with polarized reputation.

Fans and haters are fighting, and the work is suffering? It’s hard to tell whether it’s true or not.

In recent years, romance films released in mainland China have to be "appropriate" and choose good days in an effort to reap a wave of box office revenue.

Among these, many films have successfully become box office hits.

The most recent one was "Twinkle Twinkle Star" released at the beginning of this year, which had a score of 5.2 and grossed 700 million yuan in just a few days.

Logically speaking, "Positive and Negative" started with a score of 7.2, and even though it has now dropped to 7.1, its reputation is still significantly better, and the cast is also good.

How could it have fallen to such a miserable state?

Is the movie itself worth watching?

Brother Pi watched the entire film and objectively shared the advantages and disadvantages of the film.

If you want to go to the cinema, this article may give you some reference.

01、

Let’s first look at the story of this romance film to see if there are any novel settings.

Different from the old problem of romantic films in which the character settings tend to be "dreamlike", idealized and out of touch with reality, the "basic settings" of the male and female protagonists in the film are very down-to-earth and quite representative.

The male protagonist Huang Zhenkai (played by Zhu Yilong) is a typical urban white-collar worker (social animal).

Every day I commute between the company and my residence.

I go to work on time, go home on time, order takeout, buy lunch boxes, and occasionally cook for myself. My life is extremely regular.

But Huang Zhenkai is also a "patient with urban hollowing out" and his edges have long been smoothed out by heavy work.

I have no friends and no hobbies. Every day when I get home I just sit in front of the TV. I feel depressed, easily numb, lack pleasure, and have no interest in anything around me.

The heroine Li Xiaole (played by Qiu Tian) is the complete opposite of Huang Zhenkai, who "goes out early and comes back late".

She is a nocturnal animal, often sleeping at home during the day and not going out until nightfall.

The jobs they do are also varied, including selling alcohol in bars, selling insurance, selling cosmetics, providing training, and doing live broadcasts. They do whatever can make money.

Li Xiaole is a typical "avoidant attachment personality" and lacks a sense of security about anyone and anything around him.

She has many different identities and names. She changes her identity as frequently as she changes her hairstyle. She never reveals her inner thoughts and always deliberately hides her true self.

The living conditions and personality traits of these two types of people are completely different.

But they still have one common characteristic, which is "poor".

This is also a common phenomenon among young people today.

The filmmakers designed it this way naturally to allow the audience to easily empathize with the story and create an emotional resonance.

The movie takes the opportunity of "sharing the same apartment" to bring together these two people with completely different "living habits".

At first, they were eager to get to know each other.

Just as the collision of the two personalities of "conservative numbness" and "unrestrained freedom" echoes the theme of "negative equals positive", water and fire blend together to achieve a kind of emotional complementarity and mutual healing.

But as their feelings deepen, they desire genuine love but are also afraid of giving too much and getting hurt.

The contradictory mentality of wanting to find emotional support and belonging, but also insisting on freedom and individuality gradually emerges.

From a practical point of view, when the relationship between two people develops to the stage of discussing marriage, the issue that often comes up is "money".

It's not explicitly stated in the movie, but enough foreshadowing and hints have been given.

Both of them came from poor backgrounds.

Huang Zhenkai's parents divorced because of his father's infidelity, and Li Xiaole's father is in jail for fraud.

Their income is not high either.

Although Huang Zhenkai is a white-collar worker in a company, he changes jobs frequently;

Li Xiaole has no fixed job and, like her father, makes a living by doing some unconventional jobs.

Even if they were happy together, they had no plan for the future of their relationship, let alone starting a family.

That’s why Li Xiaole said, “Once people get to know another person, they will hate him or her.”

This is also the real dilemma faced by young people of marriageable age today.

In the end, Li Xiaole chose to escape. She left the apartment to avoid debt collection.

Huang Zhenkai searched the whole world for her but to no avail, so he had to return to his hometown. Three years later, the two lonely people met unexpectedly on the beach.

The main plot of the movie is not tortuous, nor does it have the time-space interweaving and time-travel plots that play with the settings of romance films in recent years such as "Want to See You" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Star".

But through the love between this young man and woman, it explores the realistic problems that young people today must face in choosing a spouse and getting married.

On a technical level, Huang Zhenkai's blue hair creates a strong visual contrast with Li Xiaole's red hair;

Close-up shots capture subtle changes in the actors’ expressions;

The bizarre images and the clever use of montage editing techniques make the film present a visual spectacle that is both light and free and dreamy, which are all outstanding aspects of the film.

02、

The core of the film's story is quite realistic and can trigger the audience's thinking about reality, which is worth affirming.

However, director Wen Shipei also made the same mistakes common to young directors during his narrative expression.

They like to play tricks, are keen on self-expression, and ignore the audience's viewing experience and feelings.

First of all, both the script writing and the shooting techniques show obvious traces of imitating Wong Kar-wai's visual language.

For example, the camera is often placed on people's faces and surrounding objects, unreal lenses are used, and there are long passages of narration and dialogue, all of which are imitations of Wong Kar-wai's films.

But the problem is that although Wong Kar-wai gives people the impression that he "does not write scripts", his films are always full of golden sentences that are very impressive.

Although this film contains a lot of narration and dialogue, they fail to hit the point and get to the heart of the matter. Instead, they are just scratching the surface.

Secondly, director Wen Shipei still lacks skills in storytelling.

The two protagonists, Huang Zhenkai and Li Xiaole, were supposed to have 50-50 roles.

However, the film focuses all the character creation on Huang Zhengkai alone, and pays little attention to the creation of Li Xiaole.

This resulted in her image remaining unclear until the end of the film, leaving the audience confused.

Furthermore, the biggest problem is that director Wen Shipei added a rather "sci-fi" alien line.

From the very beginning, Huang Zhenkai's life was set up like a personal movie with a predetermined script, with a group of aliens in charge of filming, revolving around him every minute and every second.

This group of aliens should have been just an imaginary concept and should not affect the development of the main storyline.

However, the director made them concrete and they appeared many times to influence Huang Zhenkai's life.

Even in the middle of the film, Huang Zhenkai suddenly entered the aliens' lair——

A place like the Time Variants Authority in Marvel movies, where they fight against a group of aliens.

The addition of these unnecessary plots seriously disrupted the rhythm of the narrative, destroyed the atmosphere of the film, and also affected the audience's emotions and viewing experience.

This almost turned a film that was originally full of artistic atmosphere into a confusing farce.

03、

Perhaps a patient audience like Pico can tolerate these shortcomings in expression and experience another level of conception from the film's creators.

But for audiences who just want to watch a light-hearted romantic popcorn movie, it is inevitably difficult to accept.

This is exactly why the movie's box office is struggling to improve.

To sum up what has been said above, "Negatives Make Positive" is indeed a rare work in recent years that is based on reality and is able to capture the emotions and real-life dilemmas of urban men and women.

However, some of the director's unconventional techniques of expression have invisibly raised the threshold for movie-watching and kept most audiences out.

This is really counterproductive.

Text/PiPi Movie Editorial Department: Passionate and Loyal

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