Luo Wenji, who won the Best Actress Grand Slam at the age of 77, has been a "professional cute grandma" for a long time. ....

2024-06-12 22:29:03 entertainment 5860℃

Luo Wenji, who won the Best Actress Grand Slam at the age of 77, has been a "professional cute grandma" for a long time.

She has filmed the cute and naive Ms. Wen Ji in "Funny Family" and the bad-tempered old woman who returned to her 20s in "Weird Girl". Neither of them are mature adults. In the short quarrel between parents, she showed a vivid image of an elderly woman that transcended tradition, and thus won the love of a group of young audiences.

▲ "Funny Family" (left); "Strange Her" (right)

However, it was not until she took over the filming of the new movie "Outing" released this year that Luo Wenji admitted that this was the "first time she fell in love with herself in more than 60 years of acting" s work". This time, she stopped telling happy stories. In the past, she was a living expression bag, but in this drama, she transformed into an old woman who has to constantly face the "betrayal" of her relatives, the loss of health and the pressure of life.

▲"Outing"

Luo Wenji plays Enxin, a Parkinson's disease patient who has reached his twilight years. She and Kim Young-ok, another Korean national grandmother (played by Kim Soon in the movie), played a pair of in-laws and old best friends who returned to their hometown after 60 years.

The movie scenes circulating on social platforms are beautifully shot, but this is not a holiday movie. The reason why Eun-shin goes home to relax has a hidden gray factor - she wants to avoid her son's "debt collection."

▲"Outing"

Although Enxin's son is married, he is a "giant baby". He was used to being taken care of by his mother, and he caused trouble every once in a while, and in the end it was Enxin who had to clean up the mess. This time, because his son was involved in franchise store fraud, he faced a collective lawsuit from 150 franchise store owners and was desperate. The son also planned to defraud Eun Xin of his insurance money, savings and real estate.

Cruelty is another undertone of this literary film. A woman's running away in her later years is no longer to escape from her husband and housework, but because of the endless "squeezing" of her son.

People who are floating in the silver wave not only face the crisis of being gradually marginalized by society, but also face the anguish of not being understood by their families. The house was Enxin's last retirement property. After Enxin refused to sell the house to pay off the debt, his son not only failed to consider his mother's difficulties, but also blamed her, "You are my mother."

▲"Outing"

Luo Wenji said that this role is her opposite, which allows her to expand her personal experience.

Enxin is not like Luo Wenji, nor is she like any noble lady or grandma from a well-off family she has played before. Enxin is the old version of a good wife and mother. After her husband passed away, she spent her youth raising her children, but in her son's heart, her contribution had long been taken for granted, even death. He even secretly bought a high death insurance policy for his mother to pay for his debts.

▲"Outing"

The discouraged Eun-shin decided to go back to her hometown with Jin-shun. However, when she got there, she discovered that the seemingly cheerful Jin Shun also had his own crisis in his later years.

Jin Shun has lived in the village for half her life, so she is naturally unwilling to sell land to developers who want to build a resort here. The son wanted to live in a high-rise building, so he resented his mother for blocking his way of making money, and the dispute got out of hand.

▲ "Outing"

Life is not smooth, and more importantly, they all find themselves too "old": Enxin's Parkinson's disease is incurable, and she may have to sit in a wheelchair in the future; Jin Shun, who suffers from severe spinal disease, has to face the dilemma of gradually becoming paralyzed. When it was most serious, it was difficult for them to get out of bed while supporting each other.

For a moment, they seemed to suddenly realize that if they could no longer provide "value", then death might be the only gift they could leave to others.

▲"Outing"

"Outing" has a heartwarming name, but the story and ending are never very heartwarming. At the end of the film, after experiencing the death of their friends, the confusion of their children, and the decline of their health, the two strong grandmothers still chose to end their lives with a "beautiful outing in the mountains."

Faced with an uncertain future, the movie seems to give a "beautiful answer", but the relaxation of the grandmothers still reflects the cruel proposition.

▲ "Outing"

Faced with their son's prodigality, they can only vent and speak out for themselves through quarrels, but they still often lose in front of traditional disciplines.

The identity of a mother often includes a supporting function. She not only has to take care of the housework, but also maintains the "normal" operation of the family. It is precisely for this reason that their son's "frustration" will make them unconsciously fall into the emotion of self-blame.

Although Enxin decided to let her son face the lawsuit alone, she still sold the house to use the money to ensure a stable life for her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Jin Shunze gave the old house to his son who wanted to live in a high-rise building. Their departure has allowed another group of people to live a "good life" to some extent.

But grandma’s calmness was more due to helpless acceptance. Compared with absolute economic poverty, women in their later years actually face a kind of "multidimensional poverty." In addition to material, it also includes various dimensions such as health and spirit. Bad relationships with family members, loss of voice in social spaces, and inadequate public welfare are all factors that constitute multidimensional poverty.

▲《Outing》

In fact, Enxin and Jinshun are not so short of money. What they lack is care, understanding and recognition of self-worth. For the elderly, growing old is sometimes a shame. I remember that in the micro-documentary "The Joy and Sorrow of Elderly Care in China", a grandfather in a nursing home described himself this way: "It's the same as me, and you have to trouble others."

▲ "The Joy and Sorrow of Elderly Care in China"

Breaking away from the primitive society that required mutual cooperation and hunting, modern society is a society that highly worships individual abilities under the development of capital industry.

Getting old means that you have no ability to work and can no longer exchange for daily necessities like young people. When an elderly person who is "incapable of working" puts himself into the algorithm, he can easily regard himself as a "person who has lost his value."

In addition, there is "social isolation". In 2021, the World Health Organization released the "Briefing: Social Isolation and Loneliness in the Elderly", which showed that social isolation and loneliness in the elderly is a common problem worldwide.

Social isolation is different from loneliness. Loneliness is a personal subjective feeling, while social isolation refers to the objective loss of contact between people and society. Although they maintain a certain degree of social interaction, due to reasons such as the remoteness of their residence or electronic life, they have actively or passively become less transparent.

▲"Outing"

In "Outing", Eun-shim and Jinshun go to McDonald's for dinner. Eun-shim's ability to order food fluently on the electronic screen made Jinshun sigh, "She is worthy of being a woman living in a big city." The director did not blatantly show Grandma Jin Shun's discomfort in facing modern society, but her lovely lines seemed to be a metaphor for some kind of loss.

▲"Outing"

After filming "Outing", Luo Wenji said in an interview, "I hope that when the audience watches "Outing", they will feel that this is not a movie, but reality." Its ending is beautifully shot, but not pretty. After watching the entire film, some people said they wished this was just an ordinary picnic. Maybe the grandmothers were just trapped and could start again after waiting for a while.