Tainan Seafood Market, with a faint morning light, is already crowded and very lively.
Today is Lin Xiuying’s birthday. She came to the seafood market she knew early in the morning. This is her territory, the main battlefield she conquered.
Every fishmonger greeted her diligently, saying "Happy birthday to Miss Lin", while showing her the best seafood in her family.
Ms. Lin was socializing in her mouth, polite, but her eyes were just skillfully picking the freshest goods. Occasionally, the fishmonger wanted to make a fuss and quote a high price. She just needed to glar and show a little shocked expression. The other party immediately defeated and sent the lobster to make up for it.
A short start, selecting goods to bargain and ship them, Ms. Lin made it cleanly and neatly in one go. Her ability and smart business and her lofty status in the world are all vividly seen in front of the camera.
70 years old, she was still called Miss Lin. Such a strange and a little embarrassing title, accompanied by the bad news from the hospital, the audience guessed the answer.
—— Her husband Chen Bochang, who has not returned from his family for twenty years, passed away in Taipei.
It was probably when he abandoned his wife and daughter that she was so strong that she changed Mrs. Chen to Miss Lin.
But she has not signed the divorce agreement left by her husband so far, and she is still his wife legally.
During the past ten years of being a husband and wife, she loved him and gave birth to children one by one. She also hated him, and took her daughter to catch the cheating scumbag with a kitchen knife, trying to kill this cheating scumbag.
Lin Xiuying is not a useless woman. She dares to love and hate, and dares to take responsibility. Her husband stopped supporting the family, so she set up a small stall to sell fried shrimp rolls, and raised her three daughters.
For twenty years, she has worked hard to run the snack stall and turned it into a famous restaurant in Tainan. The shrimp roll she raised her family back then has been improved several times and has become the restaurant's signature.
Pulling the older three daughters, each of them is working hard. The eldest daughter, a well-known dance teacher. Second daughter, a plastic surgeon in Taipei. The youngest daughter took over her mother's restaurant and became the new boss's wife.
70th birthday party is the highlight of Lin Xiuying's great and successful moment, and to conclude his inspirational and fulfilling life.
But my husband actually died on this day. She was full of fighting spirit and full of energy, and suddenly declined. The past is like yesterday, those young and loving moments, those angry and resentful times flashed through Lin Xiuying's heart one by one.
Faced with the daughters' inquiries that looked at each other - Will today's birthday party be cancelled? She replied with her last toughness - no need to bother, everything will be as usual.
Chen Bochang owed her too much Lin Xiuying in this life. Now that I am dead, I still want to return to Tainan. Isn’t this asking her to make fun of her? !
But the stubborn Lin Xiuying quickly made a decision - the birthday party will not be cancelled, and she should eat and drink, and she cannot let the people in Tainan laugh at it; the funeral must be held, and it will be held locally in Tainan to fulfill Chen Bochang's wish to return to his hometown.
However, Lin Xiuying soon found out that Chen Bochang had already had other women around him for more than ten years. It was this woman who accompanied her husband on her last journey in the hospital, and the one who had been in contact with them was her younger daughter. The mistress is the kind "Aunt Cai" she said.
Lin Xiuying was a little curious and jealous about this Aunt Cai. But there is no hatred.
In the mourning hall, Aunt Cai invited several Buddhist friends to chant sutras and salvation for Chen Bochang, while Lin Xiuying called Taoist priest to wield his sword to do it. One is still and one move, one is Buddha and one is in charge of one's own affairs in the mourning hall.
Aunt Cai chose Chen Bochang's old photo as her last photo, and Lin Xiuying replaced it with a young photo of her husband when she was with her. This is a silent competition, and Lin Xiuying is still a little angry. The descriptions of these small details of
are particularly funny and touching to the 70-year-old strong woman Lin Xiuying. She still loves her husband, but with hatred.
As husband, father, man Chen Bochang died as soon as he appeared. He has been away from this family for twenty years, but his influence is always there.
The eldest daughter and the second daughter followed her mother to catch the adulterer since she was a child. Before she became an adult, she saw the filth of marriage, and the hearts of the two girls were already shocked.
During the days when my father was absent, he reshaped his views on marriage, family and life.
The eldest daughter has become a replica of her father. Be passionate, be free, be happy, don’t have responsibility or shamelessness. Being a scumbag is so happy, being a scumbag should have the same gains. She kept smoking and cheated on her. She seemed to be carefree and unruly, but in fact she was lonely and depressed.
And her lifestyle also made her unfortunately become a patient with breast cancer . At her father's funeral, the news of her relapse was confirmed. And she could only hug her head and cry with an old lover she had just met recently.
In order to win the heart of his father, the second daughter worked hard to learn from a young age. First place in the exam, go to medical school, and become someone else's child. But my father left.
Although she lives a middle-class, happy and wealthy life with her husband, a doctor who is also an elite, the uneasiness in her heart makes her look like a frightened bird. She doesn't believe in men or marriage at all.
But my husband answered an inconvenient call. She read a love guide at home and could immediately take the initiative - if you divorce, I only want the child support.
The third daughter is the product of the catching of the adulterer. Lin Xiuying rushed to the door with a kitchen knife, and Chen Bochang jumped off the building and broke his leg. After that, Lin Xiuying helped him finish the work, paying the man's room and paying the medical expenses.
The days when a man recovered from his injuries were sweeter for a while, Lin Xiuying gave birth to the youngest daughter.
She is well protected and her family affairs are kept from her. She didn't know how bad her father was, nor did she know that because she couldn't support her third sister, she gave her to the couple named He to Singapore to raise. From then on, Lin Xiuying lost a daughter forever. And she became the third daughter in this family.
She likes her father, her mother is always so busy and annoying, and although her father rarely comes back, she always buys her delicious candy.
When she grew up, she was also the only child in the family who contacted her father and Aunt Cai, and she was also the child who had met her last time on her dying bed.
Lin Xiuying suffered a lot and pulled up three daughters. But the daughters miss their father in their own way.
" lonely " is a popular movie in Taiwan in 2020. Not only did it win the box office championship of Taiwan’s movies that year, it had a box office of about NT$200 million (about 46.36 million yuan). It was also shortlisted for six Golden Horse Awards.
Chen Shufang, the actress who plays the heroine Lin Xiuying, becomes the oldest Golden Horse Film Queen in history at the age of 81. It films a family ethical story that Taiwanese filmmakers are best at.
"My grandma did hold a funeral with her grandfather's lover back then." This is exactly the real experience of Xu Chengjie, director of "The Loneliness" adapted from his grandmother.
There are scumbags, cheating, and catching adultery, but it is not bloody at all. On the contrary, the filming is calm, timeless and soul-stirring.
The so-called "solute taste" is a Taiwanese old song in the film that Lin Xiuying likes the most.
The taste of youth is sour and sweet, and good songs do not require lyrics. If you drink this glass of youth in a big gulp, you don’t have to be afraid of inner sorrow.
sings the sad feelings of youth being gone and the departure of lovers. It also sings the loneliness of life.
Secondly, the feature of many restaurants in Taiwan is: only focus on making one dish and make it a signature. Lin Xiuying started her business with the solitary taste of "fried shrimp rolls".
However, there is also a lonely smell of life. That is a kind of persistence in feelings, the "sense of loneliness" that you taste.
Honey Chen Qichang wants to divorce Lin Xiuying, she said that husband and wife are a lifelong thing. So she kept her wife alone for the rest of her life.
Director cleverly uses food to metaphor for life. Lin Xiuying's fried shrimp rolls are a microcosm of his life.
This movie is difficult to understand the taste of it without any life experience. Because it does not conform to the current values of independent women - why should we marry a scumbag? Why do you have to have so many daughters? Is it just to have a son? Why do we have to end up together? Why do we have to be obsessed with scumbags? Why do scumbags always have good women to accompany them?
Why don’t you let go if you divorce, and find a little wolf dog without being careless?
…
Lin Xiuying was a person in the 1950s and 1960s. The values of that era are still very different from today, but the most important thing is that she loves him.
"Scumbag" is so fond of women in the play. Even the eldest daughter who learned this way is the same. It's really ironic, worthy of deep thought for women.
In addition, director Xu Chengjie did not simply label the "third party" and "scumbag" as stereotyped. Chen Qichang showed many charming and responsible moments in the play. The mistress Aunt Cai is a dedicated and open woman. The director shows the intricacies of our Chinese emotions from the complexity of human nature and the diversity of emotions.
The whole family tore up, and everyone said harsh words that were bleeding. Poke each other's wounds.
But when you encounter difficulties, you will immediately unite and fall in love with each other, and you can contribute and sacrifice for each other.
This is the intricate Chinese emotion. Sometimes, it is big enough to accommodate everything, and sometimes it is small enough to fight each other in the tip of the needle.
And the virtues of tolerance, sacrifice, tolerance and dedication in traditional Chinese women, although
is still criticized now, I can't help but be moved by it.
Lin Xiuying finally chose to reconcile with herself, to reconcile with her husband, and to reconcile with the past.
This family record that transcends the times is also an emotional experience to learn to let go.
She filled out the divorce agreement left by her husband twenty years ago. Although it was meaningless, she wanted to burn him to help him get rid of it.
She gave up her wife and asked the mistress to host the funeral as a vain. She was generous and tolerant.
Director Xu Chengjie said - "No one can really teach another person how to let go, because everyone's right or wrong or view of something in their heart is his own homework."
Let go of the past and forgive others is the real letting go of yourself. In the world of emotions, the best way to get rid of it is to let go.
Lin Xiuying finally sang the song "Solute Taste" with her ex-husband Chen Qichang in the imaginary world, but from beginning to end, she was the only one who tasted the lonely taste.
