January 2, 2023 issue | Total issue 3104
When it comes to forbidden love, what do you think of?
Is it a sister-brother love, a teacher-student love, or a fantasy love? The Taiwanese drama "Lesson 9" brings these taboo love stories to the screen.
In Taiwan, forbidden love is a unique but not uncommon genre. For example, "Death Girl", which was broadcast 12 years ago, used fantasy settings, unit drama format and dark style to make all kinds of forbidden love interesting.
Now, "Lesson 9", directed by Wang Liwen and starring Tiffany Hsu and Chen Haosen, once again focuses on the topic of forbidden love with a campus as the background. In terms of content, style, and techniques, it has improved on the basis of previous similar works. Through the parallel lines of love and suspense, it whets the audience's appetite.
"Lesson 9" does not adopt a unit format, but is arranged in chronological order, using clever lens language to preset the foreshadowing, focusing on various emotional relationships with the protagonists: Chinese teacher Chen Mengyun (played by Xu Tiffany), school bully gifted student Zhang Yixiang (played by Chen Haosen), teaching director Li Dawei (played by Xue Shiling), and parent-teacher association president Xie Shufen (played by Yin Xin).
Compared with unit dramas where the protagonists are scattered, this approach makes the story structure more compact, but it also inevitably looks bloody. Judging from the latest plot, Chen Mengyun and Zhang Yixiang, who are talking about teacher-student love, may actually be half-siblings. Anyone who watches it will say "bullshit".
Although the characters and stories in "Lesson 9" have been refined to be too typical, the extremely accurate lens language in the play keeps people's desire to follow the show. After all, a drama that has a distinctive style and dares to speak out on real issues can always grab the audience's attention.
Shots of important scenes: exaggerating the atmosphere and promoting emotions
"Lesson 9" is eye-catching because every important scene has an impressive memory point. Take the school bullying scene at the beginning of the story as an example. Within fifteen minutes, the director not only explained the basic character relationships to the audience, but also used a series of exciting and emotional shots to create a tense and depressing campus atmosphere.
Xu Keren (played by Lin Yuhan), who comes from a well-off family, is a well-known eldest sister in the second year of high school. She enjoys bullying her classmate Liu You (played by Yang Cheng). On the one hand, she hopes to use this to establish her authority, and on the other hand, she also hopes to attract the attention of Zhang Yixiang, the bully of the third year of high school.
As expected, Xu Keren got his wish and got on the line with Zhang Yixiang. In order to win the leadership of Liu You in the school, they initiated a "betting" and tied Liu You to the goal. It was agreed that the first side to kick the football to Liu You would be the winner.
When filming Xu Keren's scenes, the director used multi-camera quick pans and flash cuts to edit Xu Keren's close-ups and close-ups together with the group shots of the bullying gang, supplemented by the downgrading technique, which not only visually created the dynamic effect of football flying, but also brought dignified and anxious dramatic tension to the campus bullying plot.
When the camera came to Zhang Yixiang, the director first used a panning lens from bottom to top to let the audience see Zhang Yixiang's uninhibited and cool character temperament. Then, the camera continuously switches back and forth between Zhang Yixiang's close-up shots, the victim Liu You's close-ups, and the football, showing Zhang Yixiang's series of actions from Zhang and Liu's dual perspectives, directly pushing the excitement to a climax.
Subsequently, Chen Mengyun's appearance explained to the audience the basic character relationship in "Lesson 9": the campus PK between the Chinese teacher with a sense of justice and the rebellious students.
What is noteworthy is that the director did not give Chen Mengyun a full face close-up when he appeared. Instead, he used several partial close-ups, such as his slender calves, firm back, and dignified lower half of his face, to create a mysterious color for the character.
In addition, when filming Chen Mengyun, the director changed his fast-paced style and used soothing and slightly hazy shots to slow down her walking and turning movements when rescuing Liu You, creating an intellectual and calm character profile of her. At the same time, it also paved the way for Chen Mengyun's guidance and rescue of Zhang Yixiang in the subsequent story.
When dealing with specific images, the director also hides the metaphorical meaning behind the images in the language of the shots.
The water-light ornaments that appear twice in the play are external reflections of the growing love between Chen and Zhang. The changes in light color and the stacking of bubbles symbolize Zhang Yixiang's growing fascination with Chen Mengyun. Under the glow of orange-red lights, the ambiguous atmosphere between Chen and Zhang began to heat up, becoming more and more intriguing. The director
has ulterior motives in connecting the waterlight close-ups with Zhang Yixiang's dreams. He uses the illusion of dreams to vividly convey the taboo feeling of love, the danger of wandering on the border and Zhang Yixiang's inability to extricate himself.
Cut-scene shots: simple, effective, and intriguing
In "Lesson 9", we can hardly see long-lasting useless shots. Even the passing cutscenes and the supporting characters are full of aftertaste.
What first caught the author's attention were several foreshadowings on the teaching director Li Dawei. Audiences who have watched too many suspense dramas know that every inconspicuous supporting character who hangs around the protagonist is often responsible for promoting the development of the plot, as is the case with Li Dawei.
Li Dawei is the school's teaching director. He was expelled from the school due to work mistakes and had a career stain. He got the opportunity to work in Nanyi on the recommendation of Xie Shufen, the president of the Parents' Association.
The girlfriend Li Dawei talks about is his first foreshadowing. In the play, Li Dawei has always emphasized that he has a girlfriend who has been dating for two years. The director also showed the audience that his girlfriend locked Li Dawei out of the room because he gave gifts to female colleagues without authorization.
But it is worth noting that in this scene, Li Dawei was always talking to himself. We did not see the true face of his girlfriend, nor did we hear her voice. The director did not keep the camera focused on Li Dawei. Instead, he showed the audience the living environment of Li Dawei's home in detail: the men's magazines on the table and the men's shoes on the shoe rack at the door showed no trace of a woman's life.
Are all these hints to the audience: Li Dawei’s girlfriend is not as simple as he said? Or is the so-called girlfriend just his fantasy?
Li Dawei’s move to give Chen Mengyun an electronic clock was the second foreshadowing. In the play, we can see that as soon as Chen Mengyun installed the electronic clock, a beep sounded from Li Dawei's home computer.
In the subsequent plot, Li Dawei called Chen Mengyun late at night, but Chen Mengyun did not answer because he was depressed. The next day, Li and Chen talked about this. Chen Mengyun lied that he did not receive the call because he went to bed early. Although Li Dawei replied "It's okay", if the audience looks carefully, they will find that Li Dawei's expression became thoughtful at this time.
This may also be a hint: Li Dawei knows every move of Chen Mengyun? Did Li Dawei monitor Chen Mengyun's every move through an electronic clock?
These shots are effective reminders to the audience: Li Dawei is not the good gentleman he seems on the surface, and the story behind him may be the focus of the whole drama.
The second thing worthy of attention is the smooth and clean transitions in the play. For example, through the transition processing of the mobile phone lens. In the play, Xu Shuqi, Zhang Yixiang’s friend, is an Internet celebrity who often broadcasts live. The director cleverly took advantage of Xu Shuqi’s habit of shooting videos with her mobile phone, resulting in many vivid and natural transition shots. The footage she shot of Zhang Yixiang and Xu Keren's gambling scene connects the two scenes where Chen and Zhang first meet on the playground and meet again in the classroom.
realizes the transformation of different scenes through the props in the hands of the characters. On the one hand, it allows the audience to see the director's design ingenuity, and on the other hand, it can omit irrelevant cutscenes, effectively saving time, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.
Although there are many variations in the lens processing of "Lesson 9", they are mostly used to render the atmosphere. In terms of advancing the narrative rhythm, the director prefers to use characters and plots as bridges to connect various story lines. This also helps "Lesson 9" avoid the deliberate and suspended feeling of showing off skills.
[Text/Yichen]
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