"You're a Youth" was released for 12 days, with a box office of over 1.2 billion and a stable score of 8.4. Behind the success of the
movie, there is a person whose name cannot be ignored- director Zeng Guoxiang. The name
may be very unfamiliar. You may be more familiar with his father, , Zeng Zhiwei, , who has been in Hong Kong’s entertainment industry for 40 years, and his sister, , Zeng Baoyi, who also developed in the entertainment industry. With such a prominent family background and aura, Zeng Guoxiang, who was born in the second generation of stars, seemed a bit too low-key. Few people know that, at the age of 40, he has actually been fighting in the film industry for nearly 20 years. 0 1 My father is a big brother On November 8, 1979, Zeng Zhiwei's second wife gave birth to Zeng Guoxiang. It was the golden age of Hong Kong movies. Zeng Zhiwei, a football player, accidentally stepped into the Hong Kong film and television circle.
With his talent and hard work, Zeng Zhiwei started from the bottom of the action stand-in and worked his way up and down, from stunt actors, screenwriters, actors, directors, producers, etc., to almost all departments of the film industry. With such an all-round dad, many people would think that Zeng Guoxiang must have grown up in an environment surrounded by filmmakers.
However, the opposite is true. Because his father is too busy at work and often spends a lot of time with his family, Zeng Guoxiang grew up with his mother in Canada since he was a child. Maybe it is the father Zeng Zhiwei who does not want the next generation to suffer the same as his own, so he has always tried his best to keep the children away from the shooting scene so that they can grow up like normal children. However, after all, there is a big brother father in the movie circle who still had an important influence on Zeng Guoxiang's childhood.
Zeng Guoxiang liked to watch movies since he was a child, and dreamed of being a movie director in the future. Even though he didn't understand filmmaking at all at the time, he couldn't imagine how difficult it was to film. Fortunately, his sister Zeng Baoyi became his adolescent literary and artistic enlightenment teacher. When he was fourteen or five years old, he heard the rock music of mainland China and began to watch Haruki Murakami's books and Wong Kar-wai movies.
When he was sixteen years old, Zeng Guoxiang had a solemn conversation with his father. He said that he wanted to make a movie in the future.
But the father did not immediately express his opinion after hearing this. He just said to his son: wait until you finish college.
So, following his mother's arrangement, Zeng Guoxiang went to the University of Toronto to apply for sociology. The reason is: if fails to make a movie, at least it can leave a way out.
But in fact, Zeng Guoxiang's heart is most like reading movies. At the same time, during college, Zeng Guoxiang also majored in psychology, political science, history and other subjects. This gave him another way to experience the world, and also taught him how to empathize and understand the values of everyone and each role.
So in many of his works after he became a director, the two most common themes are the exploration of the characters' inner emotions and the thinking about social issues. 0 2 Master Chen Kexin Zeng Zhiwei thought that his son would give up his movie dream after studying sociology, but he did not expect his son to be true. So in his junior year, after his father's introduction, Zeng Guoxiang entered the film company of the famous director Chen Kexin. Zeng Guoxiang realized at this time that his father did not object to his involvement in the film industry, and he had already chosen a master for him.
Zeng Guoxiang, who first entered the film industry, did not receive preferential treatment because of his father's aura, instead he completely mixed on the set with an amateur attitude. Zeng Guoxiang has a clear understanding and attitude towards his movie dreams. He felt that-since decided to be a director in the future, he really had to suffer a bit. was already a millennium, and the Hong Kong film industry has long lost its glory, and many established production companies are on the verge of disintegration. A newcomer in the film industry, Zeng Guoxiang, started by translating documents, making posters, and ordering takeaways, and then worked as a production assistant, screen recorder, and deputy director, gradually knowing what the filming is all about. Looking back on his path to filming, Zeng Guoxiang is most grateful to his master Chen Kexin, who brought him to the forefront, and Chen Kexin's queen producer Xu Yuezhen, who taught him the knowledge of large and small movies.
Zeng Guoxiang recalled: It was a rare and precious time for . My current serious and meticulous attitude towards film production was all learned from Chen Kexin and Xu Yuezhen. Many years later, Chen Kexin helped to produce "July and Ansheng" , and Xu Yuezhen is the producer of "You are the Younger" .
is even more coincidental-when Chen Kexin entered the film industry, he was inseparable from the support of Zeng Guoxiang's father Zeng Zhiwei. In 1985, Jackie Chan went to Yugoslavia to shoot his long-prepared action-adventure production "Dragon Brother and Tiger Brother". At that time, Zeng Zhiwei had become the director of the film crew, while the 23-year-old Chen Kexin was just an assistant producer of the crew.
Soon, Zeng Zhiwei noticed the talent of this young man and invited him to join his own film company. A few years later, he personally starred in the debut film "Tale of Two Cities" directed by Chen Kexin. This film helped Zeng Zhiwei, who was a comedy star, successfully transformed and won the first Hong Kong award winner in his life.
The following year, the two teamed up to create the most successful independent production company UFO in the 1990s, specializing in commercial films with literary temperament. The most successful work is the two-person collaboration "Sweet Honey" . Later, the UFO company was disbanded due to market reasons, but the relationship between Chen Kexin and Zeng Zhiwei's old friends is still good.
may be right the old saying: the entertainment circle is really a circle. More than a decade later, Zeng Zhiwei introduced his son to Chen Kexin's film company. Later, Zeng Guoxiang directed "July and Ansheng". As a producer, Chen Kexin often went to the studio and sometimes made some comments.
In Chen Kexin's own words: I watched him as a director next to him (Zeng Guoxiang), just like his dad was watching me as a director on the first day. 0 The little actor in the 3B film, Zeng Guoxiang dreamed of becoming a director, but the first to throw an olive branch at him was to be an actor. Indeed, Zeng Guoxiang, who grew up abroad, is handsome, with an angular face and a cynical appearance. From the looks of it alone, it is easy to associate him with the trendy youths on the streets of Hong Kong, and he has been on the set all the year round, so he was chosen to play some small roles.
In 2001, Zeng Guoxiang played a frivolous young Shi in the love horror film "Ghost Love Letter" . This is Zeng Guoxiang's first film work, thus officially entering the show business circle.
From the first role, Zeng Guoxiang seems to have become attached to these fringe roles. For a long time, he could only mix on the set of some Hong Kong-produced B-level films. Most of the roles played are-otaku, internet addicted youth, gangsters, idle social youth... the blind prostitutes in the adult comedy "Golden Rooster" ,
focuses on the restricted themes of aided girls "囡囡" . A soft-fried man,
, the heroine Gillian’s ex-boyfriend Aso, in the love literary film "Ex-degree" ;
and even the independent film "Half Sea, Half Flame" also has his cameo appearance .
, most of these roles are not many, and many of them are just functional or symbolic roles, and there is not much room to play. The movie that made Zeng Guoxiang shine as an actor should be the crime comedy "Old Li" .
This is the first time that Zeng Guoxiang, who has acted for more than ten years, has acted as a leading actor. Zeng Guoxiang plays an unemployed Qingqing who is accidentally involved in a robbery. He appears on the stage as a sluggish, lazy and incompetent image. However, Zeng Guoxiang's performance is quite happy, playing with a joking attitude the helplessness and helplessness of a waste wood who is in a difficult life.
However, with more and more acting, Zeng Guoxiang became more and more suspicious of his acting skills. He is not from a major, and thinks that his acting talent is limited. He has always believed that many of his performances can only be regarded as earning a living. But through these various performance experiences, he has a lot of experience in shaping the role. This also allowed him to become familiar with the actor after his transition to directorship.
has a lot of cooperation with the director, and also has a lot of experience in acting, Zeng Guoxiang can clearly know what the actors are worried about and what they are worried about, and help them complete the role modeling. When filming in "July and Ansheng", he tried to liberate Zhou Dongyu's nature and tailored the content for her.
So, "July and Ansheng" won a double yolk at the Golden Horse Awards that year. Ma Sichun and Zhou Dongyu both aspired to the queens, this is also the first double-shadow work in the history of the Golden Horse Awards. 04 A director, , who has broken away from the low-level tastes, is his peer. Zeng Guoxiang's movie taste is very different from his father who was born in comedy. Although he has been mixed in many restrictive films that are vulgar or heavy-mouthed all the year round, he is actually the most obsessed with Wang Jiawei , and his favorite youth film is Iwai Shunji "All About Lily Zhou" .
In 2008, Zeng Guoxiang, who was about 30 years old, made up his mind to be a director and stopped taking so many actor jobs. He didn't want to rely on his father's statement to attract investment, so he wrote the script for a year, and then, relying on the government's film fund, he teamed up with others to make his debut "Lovers' Talk" . This is a somewhat alternative love short film collection, which tells four modern love stories that are separated into chapters but echoed at the end. The plot and content have a lot of grotesque and evil tastes, but the expression methods are very small and fresh. The response of the
film was not considered successful, but it allowed Zeng Guoxiang to be nominated for Best New Director at the 47th Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards. However, it was this immature debut that caught Chen Kexin's attention and invited him to direct "July and An Sheng". This was Zeng Guoxiang's first independent directing of a feature film, and the film industry became a turning point in his career.
"July and Ansheng" is based on the novel of the same name. It tells the story of An Sheng and July, who had different personalities and became a bestie in high school. After undergoing multiple tests on campus, workplace, and family, they grew up, released their suspicions, and supported each other. Although the original work of Baby Annie was a hit that year, from today's point of view, the plot is somewhat bloody, especially the two heroines are very authoritative.
So Zeng Guoxiang did not rush to shoot, but made a lot of adjustments to the script to remove too much blood. He designed the plot of "exchanging lives" between July and An Sheng. After the two heroines experienced emotional changes, July began to wander, like An Sheng when they were young, but An Sheng stabilized, just like July before the wandering. So, the last person to die was July, but at the same time it was Ansheng. The film
finally received seven nominations at the Golden Horse Awards, including best director and best adapted screenplay. This shows the contribution of director Zeng Guoxiang. After "July and Ansheng", Zeng Guoxiang did not strike while the iron was hot to make more commercial films. Instead, he shot "You are a teenager" focusing on campus bullying.
In order to restore the real high school life in the play, he did a lot of homework, including collecting information, watching the college entrance examination documentary, chatting with teachers and students, and even really took the team to the local examination room to take many shots during the college entrance examination. That's why we can see the most realistic and grounded college entrance examination plot in the lens of a Hong Kong director.
Zeng Guoxiang, who has experience in training actors, did not disappoint the audience this time. Not only the heroine corner Dongyu Zhou and ushered in a reborn acting explosion, even Yiyan Qianxi performed equally well.
On the other hand, with the successful experience of "July and Ansheng", Zeng Guoxiang gradually began to add some social perspectives and problem reflections to youth films. In "Youth in Youth", he tried to open up a bigger picture for the specific type of painful youth. The plot of campus bullying in the film
not only restores the real and cruel side of campus violence, but also fails to avoid reflection and criticism of the social inducements behind the campus violence. The film also gave victims, perpetrators, bystanders, law enforcers, native families, and educational systems different dimensions and levels of construction, and it is more dependent on the audience's thinking beyond realism.
Three years ago, director Zeng Guoxiang swept the bad reputation of the mainland youth genre with a "July and Ansheng". Three years later, he used this "Young You" to "justify" the Chinese youth film again. In an interview, Zeng Guoxiang recalled his experience when he first entered the industry-when first entered the industry, his colleagues in the film industry called him "Zeng Zhiwei's son", regardless of whether he accepted the title in his heart. and even he will be angry because of this: you can say that my filming is not good, you can say that my acting is bad, I don't mind. But if you say I rely on my dad, I will be really angry!
Now, he has used two successively well-received films to prove that he has never been just a second-generation star blessed by his father's halo. In Zeng Guoxiang’s own wordsYes: If anyone thinks that I have filming and acting because of my dad, they must be biased against me. But then again, Zeng Guoxiang doesn't want others to think that he depends on his father, and doesn't want others to call him "Zeng Zhiwei's son." But Zeng Zhiwei will be very happy. People will one day call him "Zeng Guoxiang's father", right? With such a son, whoever he is, he will wake up in his dreams, right?
