Video Information
"Flower and Alice" was released in Japan on March 13, 2004. The director and screenwriter are both Iwai Shunji, the representative work is "Love Letter", and the film's soundtrack is also written by the director himself.
What needs to be mentioned in particular is the film's cinematographer, Shinoda Shinoda, who has been shooting for Iwai Shunji's films. He is also a big influence on the title of "Youth Leader".
Shinoda passed away on June 22, 2004, less than three months after the release of "Flower and Alice", so this is his last film with Shunji Iwai. After that, the photography style of Iwai Shunji's films began to change.
In "Flower and Alice", Shino Tiansheng also appeared, playing an advertising photographer.
This film is set with two heroines. The title of the film is the name of the two protagonists. The role of Alice is Yu Aoi, whose masterpiece is this film. Recently, he also starred in "The Spy's Wife" directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Another starring role is Suzuki Kyo, her masterpiece "Initial D", here she is not a tree, but a flower.
The actor Miyamoto Yazhi is called Guo Zhibo, which sounds like a Chinese name, but he is a Japanese. Before this film, he also collaborated with the director on "All About Lily Zhou".
There are other actors
, but these actors are just cameos and appear in the feature film for a short time.
Video Highlights
The first thing to watch in this film is, of course, 18-year-old Yu Aoi. It’s not that her acting skills were amazing at that time, but the filming method of this film is very suitable for her, which will be discussed later. mentioned.
Of course, Yu Aoi's acting skills are also improving.
A few years ago, when Shunji Iwai recalled his cooperation with Yuu Aoi on "All About Lily Zhou", he said that Yuu Aoi was still a junior high school student at the time, and she just started filming and needed to explain a lot to her, but she said, "I don't understand. ". So the director put a small walkie-talkie in her pocket and told her "Look up, look left" as soon as filming started.
When he filmed "Flower and Alice" two years later, he was happy to find that Yu Aoi could do anything and grew up.
By the way, for Chinese audiences, this film has an additional point of view, that is, listening to Yu Aoi speak Chinese.
Spoiler ahead
There are many paragraphs in the video, all of which are shot in backlight, combined with soft focus lens, and overexposure, so that the natural light in the scene produces a large halo, in addition to the sun, there are some other reflections in the picture Zone, using such a light source for lighting, the visual effect is made like a dream, like an unreal world.
In such an unreal world, the outlines of characters are covered by a layer of light, so that a series of gestures such as the characters' bodies and movements are highlighted. Capturing adolescent girls in this way made Yu Aoi, who was eighteen years old, shine.
Most of the photography techniques used in this film are handheld shooting, and most of the time the lens is not static. It just so happens that the film is about adolescence, and "movement" is the normal state of adolescence.
At the very beginning of the film, a series of scenes showing two active girls were edited together. Flower and Alice trot all the way, shuttle between various tram stops. And the soundtrack with a bit of agility, showing that the girls can't be quiet.
There is also a scene where they are walking on the concrete road and then suddenly jumping in the snow, revealing that they do not want to accept the boring order.
In addition to being physically active, adolescence will not be a stagnant pool in spirit, with restlessness and throbbing. In short, it is difficult to calm down.
When Hua and Alice were peeking at the boy they liked, there was a subjective shot. The frequency of shaking was slightly increased here, allowing us to experience the feeling of a deer bumping around.
Later, when Alice enters nympho mode, the tram is moving, and the two of them grab the handrail located above, like two soldiers who are disarmed and surrendered.
But they seem to fall under the boys' suit pants, but they are actually conquered by their own fantasies. Alice is disillusioned when Hua compares each other to Hannibal from a horror movie, and she immediately feels broken.
There is also a special way of filming in the dynamic video, that is, when Hana and Miyamoto Masashi went out on a date, Hana's face was covered in half by the glass window, and the reflection on the glass was used to form a combined virtual and real face, At this time, Hua's head swayed slightly, and the whole face suddenly became bigger and smaller.
Flower's heart probably swings back and forth between the guilt and pleasure of lying.
Iwai Shunji said in an interview that he did not recognize his title of "Youth Leader". He said that he just likes to photograph stupid people, and adolescence is the stupidest time in a person's life.
I think the "stupid" he said may include this fantasy anytime, anywhere, and is often self-centered and out of reality. Therefore, the dreamlike photography style in the film aptly represents the most stupid adolescence.
The stupid here does not mean slow response, on the contrary, it may be too agile. When Alice fell in love with her nympho, two boys appeared at the same time in her subjective perspective. She was talking about mixed-race people, but it was uncertain which one she liked in her heart.
When the camera cuts back to the boy for the last time, there is only Masashi Miyamoto in the picture, and it is a close-up. Maybe Alice just feinted and deliberately didn't talk about the one she liked. Even if he said it, he just pretended to say casually that he would arrange Yazhi to the flower. The flower said no to it as soon as I heard it, but it turned out to be really fragrant afterward.
Such duplicity is also a kind of stupidity. This is not stupidity with insufficient IQ, but clumsiness in emotional expression. There are many designs in
Flower and Alice that collide two different worlds. The title alone is a combination of a Japanese name and a foreign language name. From the perspective of Japanese culture, one of these two names is more traditional and the other is more modern. The name
can be understood in various ways. For example, tradition also represents the past, while modernity is at the forefront of time.
Alice always goes faster than flowers. There are a lot of walking shots of the two characters in tandem. It was Alice walking in front of the flowers. Because she grows faster than flowers. This difference can also be seen in the family of the two.
Alice grew up in a single-parent family. When her family scene first appeared in the film, Alice was making sukiyaki, and her mother had just returned from a date. Alice also taught her mother to be careful and read the newspaper after dinner. , caring about current affairs is also a paternalistic move, and the roles of the mother and daughter have been switched.
In such a family, Alice is forced to grow up rapidly, and the world of girls and the world of adults appear on her at the same time. Therefore, she is very observant. When she meets her mother outside on a date with her new boyfriend, she quickly understands it and knows that her mother does not want her boyfriend to know that she has a daughter.
Miyamoto Masahiro asked her to verify whether the two were dating out of date, and she also instantly cooperated with the flower performance. These are the skills that are acquired during rapid growth.
The family background of the flower was revealed when the classmate who loved photography told the story of the flower house. Flowers do not fall in love with school and shut themselves in a flower house all day long, which is an act of refusing to grow. Later it was Alice who took her to ballet, which gave her a new way of seeing the world. That series of shots of Alice walking away with flowers is the epitome of their relationship.
There is another way to look at titles, flowers and Alice, traditional and modern. Tradition always has a paranoid temperament, while modern has a rebellious attribute. Paranoia and rebellion are both traits of adolescence.
Flower's biggest paranoia in the film is to treat love. In order to get close to Miyamoto Yazhi to join the rakugo club, rakugo is a traditional project, rakugo and ballet, just like the corresponding relationship between the two names of flowers and Alice, It is the collision of two different worlds in the same person.
Hana is even practicing rakugo in the dance studio. Her paranoia about love trumps everything, so she uses a series of lies to capture the good boy.
Alice's biggest rebellion was the stunning ballet at the end of the film. Before that, she had undergone many rounds of interviews, which were full of adult rules, and Alice was relatively weak.
During the audition, before she finished her lines, she was tricked by other interviewers who were eager to perform. Until the last time she faced a strong interviewer, she resisted with body language.
Miyamoto Masaki is the slowest of the three, but his head was hit by the door, so that he fell into the flower scam one after another. When the three of them went to the beach together, when they got out of the car, Yazhi was originally walking in front, which was completely opposite to the passive position before, but Alice immediately took everyone to the other side, and instantly regained the initiative.
In addition, Yazhi is also the fusion point of the two characteristics of flowers and Alice. The rice ball sandwich they ate at the beach is a fusion of tradition and modernity. Alice also became like a flower in front of Yazhi, one lie after another.
Most of these lies are that Alice copied her own memories with her father. Alice's dad is also very traditional. They eat Japanese food, and the places they go to are either temples or courtyards, all of which are traditional buildings.
Dad's gift to Alice is a very old-fashioned pen. And his most paranoid point is that when teaching Chinese characters in schools, they should directly teach Chinese pronunciation. In his opinion, Chinese is the most traditional.
Although Alice is walking on the road of rebellion, it is difficult to get rid of old memories. She asked Yazhi to use the pen given by her father, and she also learned how to express her emotions in Chinese. Adolescence is like this, tradition and modernity, paranoia and rebellion, collide and merge with each other.
Finally, the subtlety of the video that moved me is Alice's little actions. For example, the strange set of decompression actions appeared when the embarrassment was resolved by the sea.
There is also the action of pressing the nose with both hands when Yazhi exposes the lie, usually showing a person ashamed, and will directly give the full face so that the audience can see all the expressions of the actor, or directly cover the face with both hands, so that the audience can make up the expression .
This nose-pressing action adds randomness, just like Alice's habitual action, which is natural.
I don't know if this action is specially designed by the creators, but even if it is designed, it has made a random effect, and there is no trace of artificial axe.
is like an ancient Chinese building, building a house in the jungle or mountains, the pursuit is to make the building look not built, but grown in nature.
If you look at it this way, the camera in "Flower and Alice" captures both Alice and Aoi Yu.
