interface news reporter | Xu Luqing
interface news editor | Huang Yue
The title of the 2024 Golden Goblet Award participating film "A Bathroom of One's Own" (the film was screened at the Shanghai Film Festival yesterday) comes from Woolf's "A Room of One's Own". Antonia also writes, but not in her room, which has only a double bed. She writes in the bathroom, or rather, on the toilet. This movie is her fantasy adventure in the toilet.
Antonia, 65, is a housewife. She spends her days in the two-bedroom apartment of a middle-class residence, doing laundry, washing dishes, making stew for family gatherings, and sharing a 1.8-meter bed with her husband. No family knew that she became a toilet poet when she was alone, wandering around the city, sitting on various toilets, writing and fantasizing.
In the toilet room, she listened to stories about the sewer pipes, the sink, and the story of little Ah Fei going crazy. The area around the toilet was both a place where humanity was revealed and a paradise for whimsy. After finishing the housework and the man going to work, she picked up a pen and paper and locked it, enjoying the only place where she would not be disturbed. The water in the toilet is like a source of inspiration. Here she writes stories that her husband never reads, and she also meets Fernando, a goldfish that accidentally breaks into the toilet puddle from the sewer.
Poster of "A Bathroom of One's Own" (Photo source: Shanghai Film Festival)
Antonia is lucky. At 65, she still had friends, a sense of humor, and even a million-dollar inheritance from a female relative who suddenly arrived with a note from Woolf, "A woman who wants to write novels must have money and a room of her own." My own room. "The woman is rich, which is reflected in her determination to participate in the short story contest and her banging on the table after making the stew. Later, she simply moved the bed, desk and Fernando into the bathroom of her home and lived there ever since. She writes here, has afternoon tea with friends, and dances. She is the protagonist of the space in the bathroom, and men are the intruders. She allowed him to come in, pee, and then left. "I have become the space I live in. I am nothing, but I am also everything." The most touching scene in the
movie occurs in Antonia's memory - the toilet door opens again and again, the camera keeps switching, the little girl reaches old age Pictures of life fly out like pictures. In the toilet, she avoided the dean of primary school, skipped classes to read novels, had sex, stared at the pregnancy test stick in trance, vomited, and smoked as she aged. It’s not the square, it’s not the auditorium, it’s the toilet that houses a woman’s life biography, but why is there only the toilet?
Lucia Casal Rodriguez, the director of "A Bathroom of One's Own", is from Spain and was born in 1996. This film is her feature film debut, but it's already very mature. In a light and playful style, we follow Antonia as she daydreams and wanders around the toilet, occupying space with whimsy and humor. May we all have a toilet of our own, and may we not only have one toilet.
