Since "Happy Hour" in 2015 made a big splash at the 68th Locarno International Film Festival, Hamaguchi Ryusuke has become a "resident guest of at major film festivals, and in 2018 "Night and Night" Nominated for the Cannes Palme d'Or , and in 2021, " Drives My Car " won the Cannes Best Screenplay Award, and it took Hamaguchi Ryusuke less than ten years from the Japanese film industry to the world. "Happy Time" It is Hamaguchi Ryusuke's first-ever work. The entire film is 317 minutes long. It focuses on the family and emotions of four urban women in a large-scale narrative. Commercialization and commercialization make large-scale films rare, but Hamaguchi Ryusuke is more willing to sacrifice the former to achieve the pursuit of artistry. The film "Driving My Car" is also a large-scale work, only three hours long. In the film, focusing on the love and estrangement between the stage director and actor and his wife, in the three spaces of home, theater and car, the confusion, escape and revealing of emotional entanglement are staged, and the puzzles and fetters of life and death across domains are staged. It not only obtains intertextual mapping in the cross-media expression of drama, but also achieves the effect of dialogue across time and space. In addition to this, "Night and Day", as Hamaguchi Ryusuke's first commercial film, expresses with a "mirror" body, It tells about the emotional entanglement between the girl Asako Izumiya and the similar-looking Torii Mai and Ryohei Maruko. The almost calm lens weakens the "dog blood" meaning carried by the plot itself, and expresses the director's concern for "love" in the contradictions and swings of Asako Izumiya. The essence of "". With his academic training and talent-like awareness of film creation, Hamaguchi Ryusuke has become a leader in the new generation of Japanese directors, breaking the realistic tragedy of Japanese film creators and making the Japanese film industry watch At the dawn of returning to the peak of creation, most of his films focus on family, love and women in modern society, and explore the spiritual space of urban people under modern consciousness, especially the three award-winning films, which place the three elements of women, family and love. In the context of the city, in the outline of the body and desire, in the intertextual experience of different media, to realize the thinking and discussion of its ontology and spirit.
I. Mirroring and Mapping
Analyzing the Mirror Stage of the Formation of the Function of "I" in Experience", he put forward the famous "mirror" theory, which compared with Freud's id and pointed out that infants lack self-awareness in the early stage of birth, and Staying in the chaotic stage of no self, and then the self-talk and state in front of the mirror let him gradually begin to know himself, and connect the image in the mirror with himself to form an understanding of himself. And this theory is gradually applied to movies Among the criticisms of , Dai Jinhua borrowed from the book "Film Criticism" Using Lacan's mirror image theory, from the other to the subject, from the gaze to the fantasy, to explain the revelation of the mirror image to the film. In Hamaguchi Ryusuke's works, the mirror surface becomes an important way of framing the film. In
"Driving My Car", Kafuku Yusuke accidentally encounters a scene of cheating with his beloved wife while returning from a business trip. ) is placed in a peeping position, the exposure of the private scene reflected by the mirror is accompanied by the occurrence of peeping, and a strong desire mapping meaning is constructed. estrangement, which in turn highlights the peeping subject's escapism from reality.
In addition, mirroring and mapping also occur in the mutual mapping of the fate of the dramatic characters and Yusuke Kafuku as the performer. "Uncle Vanya" is a character in his wife's script. The emotional predicament caused by Uncle Vanya's worship of his half-life brother-in-law and his double disillusionment with love itself and Jiafuyou's mental trauma to his wife's derailment are like mirror reflections Forming textual intertextuality, this reflection makes it difficult for Kafuku Yusuke to face his cheating wife, and it is also difficult for him to face Uncle Vanya on stage. If the mirror image ultimately points to the confirmation and final formation of the subject, then the mirror image of the dramatic scene and the reality is more like a fable, which constitutes a double audition stimulus for the audience about the narrative subject in the film.
Different from "Driving My Car", in "Night and Night", Hamaguchi Ryusuke also adopts the mirror image theory to construct a "twin" image. In terms of interpretation, "Night and Day" adopts the interpretation method of one person playing two roles. Although Mai Duo appears with long hair, a back head and a slightly ruffian state in the image, Liang Ping has a short-medium hair appearance and an optimistic and sunny image. However, similar (or exactly the same) eyebrows and eyes form a kind of twin feeling, becoming two sides of one thing, forming a unique and large mirror effect. The two fell in love with Chaozi one after another, with similar eyebrows and the latter became the big substitute for the former. This illusion was not only given to Chaozi himself and his friends, but also fed back to the audience through the protagonist's hesitation. narrative premise.
In essence, the twin images of Mai and Liangping have become Chaozi's double-sided understanding of love. As two sides of love, from Mai to Liangping is Chaozi's change from impulsive stimulation to stable and smooth pursuit of love. The director is not immersed in the narrative of the film. There are many scenes in the film where Chaozi breaks the fourth wall and looks straight at the camera. Chaozi reverses you as the audience, making the audience face the three through the mirror of the screen. The "watching" and understanding behaviors of people's emotional entanglements constitute a narrative effect of self-reflection.
2. Body, Desire and Perception
As a tool for perceiving space and expressing emotions, the body is an important narrative tool in Hamaguchi Ryusuke's films. In "Happy Hour", the protagonist enters the art workshop at the invitation of the artist and joins the "center of gravity" experiment. From the chair in the body, from the center of the perception object to the center of the body, people build trust through the body and work together The experiment of framing and using the same center of gravity has become a representation of the protagonist's mental state. In the experiment, the body's sway and the uncertainty of the center of gravity are gradually transformed into an allegory of the fate of the protagonist under the blessing of the narrative. The narrative expression of the body as an allegory also appears in Day and Night.
In the film, Mai and Chaozi meet in the art exhibition hall. Chaozi is unconsciously attracted to Mai, and the two look at each other on the flyover and kiss each other, which is a sign of their love. Then Mai was in a car accident while driving a motorcycle with Chao Zi on the road. Looking down at the camera, the two kissed on the road regardless of other people's eyes and their own situation. The scars on their bodies became the best fable of this dangerous love, and then Liangping and Chaozi's determination of the relationship under the dangerous situation of the earthquake is undoubtedly a re-recognition of Chaozi's emotional state and orientation. In addition, the perception of the body becomes a bridge to the emotional perception of the protagonist.
Many years after Mai lost contact for no reason, Liangping appeared next to Chaozi with a similar face. Under the medium shot, Chaozi felt Liangping's facial features with his hands. The attraction and familiarity of the body became a harbinger of the beginning of their emotions. Emotions are conveyed (or transferred) through similar bodies, and Ryohei initially stands by Asako as a substitute. In addition, in "Driving My Car", the body also becomes the expression of sex and desire. A large number of direct-looking shots of sexual behavior show desire itself at a glance. "The girl's story, Yin's body is exposed on the screen intuitively. In the
story, the girl secretly sneaks into the boy's home and leaves traces of herself by exchanging items, and finally masturbates on the boy's bed to show herself. The boy's body enters the boy's bedroom, which is a private space, and it becomes a display of desire. The "lamprey" girl becomes the avatar and symbol of Yin, and the boy's bedroom is undoubtedly the expression of Yin's inner space. Desire is not only presented in the body, but as a symbol of desire, the red color of the car body in "Drive My Car" is the only bright color in the color palette of the low-saturation film. A layer of inner desire is displayed, and Yusuke Kafuku uses the drama video recorded by his wife to connect the lines in the car. The occurrence of the dialogue relationship makes the red car itself endowed with the characteristics and status of private space.
Ending
Although Hamaguchi Ryusuke's creation has been accompanied by some doubtful voices, winning numerous awards at film festivals from "Happy Time" to "Drive My Car" is undoubtedly a kind of recognition and affirmationUntil it was crowned as "opening the third golden age of Japanese film industry", from the film itself, the mature lens and narrative, as well as the attention to the city, body and emotion, make Hamaguchi Ryusuke's film have a connotative level. The creative choice of going deep and not succumbing to the market and business is also an important factor for Hamaguchi Ryusuke to win people's hearts.
