Original title: "It's Hot": A spiritual construction that embodies physical interpretation
Among the 2024 Spring Festival works, the movie "It's Hot" maintains its popularity due to its topicality. The movie tells the story of Du Leying, an overweight girl who is out of touch with society. She gets to know the sport of boxing after meeting boxing coach Hao Kun. In a difficult life situation, she starts a new chapter in her life by winning once in the boxing ring. If "Hello, Li Huanying", the first work that Jia Ling directed and starred in, is the original projection of the director's kinship (that is, the connection between the director's own experience and the work), then "Hot" released Jia Ling from the early publicity With many news about slimming down the character, the drastic changes of the main creator himself have also become an important part of artistic expression. The whole inside and outside of the film forms another artistic landscape projected by the original person, from which we can get a glimpse of the director's gradually forming authorial part, that is, his own experience. intervention. Incarnation projection is an effective means to convey a sincere creative attitude and enhance the audience's favorability. However, as a relatively private emotional narrative method, only when it is combined with a theme of universal values can it make the audience empathize. Sexual protection. In fact, both of Jia Ling's films are about the emotional themes of love and being loved. "Hello, Li Huanying" targets the public's desire to bridge the gap in kinship relationships, while "Hot and Spicy" focuses on an alienated environment. The disorder and loss of control of people on the margins show a postmodern anxiety syndrome that is common to the public.
The attributes of "Hot and Spicy" as a genre film are clear. It is adapted from "One Hundred Dollar Love" released in 2014. Like the original version, "Hot" faithfully implements the narrative formula shared by inspirational-themed genre films, that is, people who are aware of life difficulties try to solve the dilemma but fail to change themselves to solve the dilemma. This narrative logic, which has been tested by the market for a long time, carries more personal expressions of the creators. Compared with the original version, Jia Ling's version has a fresher and warmer texture, showing a warm realism creative orientation, which is largely related to the comedy elements that embellish the entire film. Comedy is the romantic spiritual characteristic common to Jia Ling's works, but to a certain extent, compared to "Hello, Li Huanying" where there are tears in laughter, "Hot and Spicy" is more inclined to use comedy elements to restrain the theme. The bitterness of life's adversity is a layer of sugar coating that wraps up the protagonist's painful and struggling process of subjective spiritual construction.
Jia Ling has always emphasized that "Hot and Spicy" tells the story of Le Ying's unique beauty. It can be said that the film is a journey of Le Ying's subjective spiritual construction. Therefore, in terms of character creation, it is not a group portrait narrative. The characters such as Haokun, Ledan, and Doudou fully serve Le Ying and are character symbols set for Le Ying in the construction of her self-identity. All the characters together depict Le Ying's character arc and are witnesses of Le Ying's spiritual transformation.
Although the director repeatedly emphasized that this is not a work about weight loss, the biggest feeling of satisfaction in the film comes from the change in Le Ying's image, that is, the spiritual construction of the film is still embedded in the interpretation of the physical body. After all, a renewed spiritual world requires a specific, quantifiable carrier. It would be even better if this change could trigger visual stimulation. This is what the nature of the film's image medium requires. In the film, the director carefully designed a scene: Le Ying, a muscular woman, walked on the corridor leading to the arena. She saw her past self in the mirror image of the glass. They stared at each other and greeted each other. Mirror is a code full of metaphors. In Lacan's mirror theory, babies go from being unable to distinguish themselves in the mirror to gradually distinguishing the difference between themselves and others. This is the first construction of full self-awareness. The confrontation between the past and present Le Ying in the mirror is extremely visually impactful, and also implies the achievement of her self-awareness.
Looking back at the film creation in recent years, the creative logic of embodying spiritual construction in physical interpretation has been favored by many commercial film directors. At the same time, the forms of spiritual construction and physical interpretation have been arranged and combined to create many different works.For example, the spiritual core changes from self-serving to benefiting others, which is "The Octagonal Cage" directed by Wang Baoqiang; another example is "Mother's Wonderful Boy" and "It Doesn't Look So Passionate" which focus on disabled people. In addition to being labeled with sports elements, these works also show a common inspirational and healing temperament. The more contrasting the target event is and the more difficult the task, the more watchable the film is. However, it should be noted that works of this type of logic need to focus on the positive interpretation of modern ethics and the broad concern for human nature. Just imagine, if Leying's successful weight loss was the product of her own self-pleasure, the aura of an independent and confident woman would be greatly reduced, and the film would lose the broad scope it should have.
Of course, "Hot and Spicy" also leaves some questions that need to be discussed. After the film was released, Le Ying's changes in the play and Jia Ling's changes outside the play together created an inspirational spectacle that made the audience carnival. This once again confirmed the artistic value of the in-depth interaction between the actor himself and the character image. With the passage of time, the heated discussions caused by the film will gradually subside, and other shining points in the film will also be captured by the audience, but this does not prevent the creators from making multi-dimensional and beneficial contributions to the communication dimension. Think forward. (Author: Wu Yao, associate professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Drama, Film and Television, Communication University of China; Cheng Yirui, Master of Arts in Radio and Television, Level 22, School of Drama, Film and Television, Communication University of China)
