Before “Hello, Li Huanying” was released, no one expected that Jia Ling’s director’s first film would set the box office record for female directors in the world with more than 5.4 billion. It was not until last year’s “Barbie” was released that this record was broken.
After “Hello, Li Huanying”, Jia Ling was picked up high. Her second director, screenwriter, and starring work carried far more expectations and pressure than other young directors. The result is surprising: this “hot and hot” is adapted from the small-budget film “100 yuan love” starring Ando Sakura, which took only two weeks to complete in 2014. Although the film was the eighth best work in the top ten of the year (the film Xunbao Award, the most authoritative award in the Japanese film industry with a history of 100 years), it is not in line with our local social situation and mainstream values. It is not only necessary to retain the core of the original work, but also to make a localized “makeover” in the setting of plot and character relationship and the control of tone. Adaptation is no less difficult than originality.
In terms of performance, Sakura Ando is the post -85 actress with the most awards and the most weight in the Japanese film industry. Not only are there works such as “The Thief Family” and “Restart Life” that are also widely known in China, long before the filming of “Hundred Yuan Love” “Before, she had already made history: the first actor to win the best actress and supporting actress of Xunbao in the same year, however, the performance in” The Love of One Hundred Dollars “is very different from her own but without trace, which makes her sweep all the movie queen including Xunbao, Blue Ribbon and Japan Olympics again. Jia Ling’s performance is also inevitably compared. Compared with the comedy style that is more familiar to the audience in “Hello, Li Huanying”, this role requires her to show a more convergent and hierarchical performance.
Sakura Ando, who presented her superb acting skills in “The Thief Family” and “Restart Life”
However, Jia Ling herself is also facing doubts: losing 100kg, while receiving a lot of affirmation, surprise and encouragement, it is also accompanied by speculation and examination. They are not friendly. For example, she has a movie, so she doesn’t need the fat girl in the past. For example, she must be winning the prize. For example, if she is thin, she is not a beautiful woman. For example, stars lose weight with team help, so it is very easy, for example, the feeling of not being fat… These remarks may not be vicious, but they still touch the eye. A celebrity who already has a huge national goodwill and seems to be extremely successful, even if it doesn’t work hard, is still popular. Why does it take more than a year to do such a risky and perhaps thankless thing?
The two heroines of “Hundred Dollar Love” and “Hot and Hot” walked into the ring before
After watching the movie, we want to talk about these two women in the two movies.
The Japanese version of “Hundred Yuan Love” has little to do with weight loss, winning or losing, and love. It tells the story of seeking desire.
The heroine played by Sakura Ando is a typical Japanese “NEET” (Not in Education, Employment or Training, no reading, no work, no training), in our words, “squatting at home”. She is not fat, but “useless”, going out is nothing more than riding on the car and slowly moving to the 100 yuan store, a whole gloomy crawling state.
Her name is first son and her sister’s second and third son. Her name is also so scribbled. Her family is busy with the lunch business in her small store and has no encouragement to her. This state is not common among Chinese young people who are all rolled up today-most of the time, our young people are in an anxious mood, and even if they are not up to it, their parents will certainly be anxious to think of ways to send them abroad to study conditionally and find a job locally without conditions.
Ando Sakura gained 10kg in order to highlight the sloppy state of the character and increase the blunt feeling of the whole person visually, but it was far from fat. Two weeks of shooting (but Ando Sakura had three months of boxing training in advance), the sloppy part was filmed in the first four days, and Ando Sakura followed the character and punched with her in the next ten days, the body began to change, and the whole person became more energetic.
Before I started boxing, I couldn’t see Hungry or Angry on Yizi. She was still chaotic. It was the first time for her to be taken to the hotel by her colleagues to violate the cash register at the Baiyuan store. In the morning, she calmly called the police and walked in the street where no one was talking about “pain, pain, pain”. Later, she had an ambiguous relationship with boxer Shouye. There was nothing certain and nothing to say, shino suddenly left home and ran away with other women… There were too many bad things in her son’s life, no matter what happened to her or around her, all of which formed the nameless fire in her heart. Fighting became her exit. Hungry and Angry’s notes were pasted on the top of the boxing gym. This state gradually changed a son’s originally humbled life.
But the genius of the movie is that you think you are going to start blood and fight back, but on the contrary, it is life that wants to win but cannot win all the time. The coach of the boxing gym seemed to say casually: “Boxing is not a prop for self-satisfaction.” “Don’t say that my mother has burned when you are lonely, which makes people very uncomfortable.” Chicken soup-style sensationalism is finally not on the table and will not be bored with it. Yizi said, “I am a woman worth only 100 yuan” (converted into RMB and less than 6 yuan). Where do so many highlight moments come from in life, just like the ending song: “it’s good to live every day in an ordinary way, even if it doesn’t make a movie.”
At the end of the film, Yizi cried and muttered: “I really want to win… I really want to win… I really want to win…” Many people will interpret Yizi’s final “loss” as “win” when interpreting it, winning self, life, feelings and recognition… This is very consistent with the education policy of “being proud of defeat” that we received since we were young. Nor is it wrong. However, the focus of “wanting to win” is not “winning”, but “thinking”. A son has the heart to win or lose, has desires, and has wishes. She gets the most vital things. This is more important than winning or losing. It is equivalent to dreams. It is good to have dreams, not because dreams will eventually come true, but dreams are like wind-up, which can make life go on without rusting. One of the children said: “Boxing is my dream”, but when asked why, he said “I don’t know”. This is perhaps the most authentic and pure form of dream-abstract, non-utilitarian, from the heart, irrepressible.
Swing a fist weapon
If you stay true to the original version, there is no doubt that the topic of public discussion will be entangled in the part of “scum” male derailment (there have been a lot of discussions and disputes in the comments under Douban stills), and the plot of being violated by colleagues is obviously not easy to put into a domestic New Year movie. If the character’s motivation and landing point do not come from these bad feelings, where should they come from?
“Hot and Hot” turns the depression in the original into more straightforward harm. The heroine Le Ying is constantly betrayed by friends, family, and relatives. They are all the people closest to Le Ying, but they are all for their own benefit. To hurt or use Le Ying, everyone only cares about themselves, and no one tries to understand her. She had been passively accepting it all.
At the same time, the heroine’s “good” qualities are put to the maximum. In a play where Le Ying and his father are having dinner, Le Ying asks his father:
“You have two apples, one big and one small. Friends want them from you. Which one do you give?”
“If a friend wants it, give it to the big one.”
“I’ll give them both.”
Le Ying’s unreserved kindness, of course, will be considered stupid by many realistic people. Profit-seeking and selfish people will always choose to hurt her, because there is no cost.
Whether in the original version or in “Hot and Hot”, “goodness” is the core of this role. In the original version, the first time after watching the wild boxing match, he asked him, are you friends with your opponent? Because you (after the match) patted each other on the shoulder. “Boxing matches are like this. When they are over, they are no longer hostile. They don’t fight because of hatred.” After being told like this, Yizi whispered, “It’s so good”; and in “Hot and Hot”, Le Ying, who “is good to people, but always hurt”, watched the boxing match and found that “two people fight like that. In the end, you can still hug each other. I think you can only be nice to people if you want to get a hug.” Boxing has become a place that will live up to and betray her, it was the kind of communication she longed for but never got.
In the most critical part of the boxing match, the film uses as few camera clips as possible to make the boxing scene very real to the greatest extent. Le Ying, who has been beaten all the time, no one inside or outside the match expected her to win or even finish the match. She was beaten to the ground and then stood up to win. The “highlight” we were waiting for was that she finally threw out her good left fist and hit her opponent, even if the next second was counterattacked to the ground.
On the basis of respecting the original, Jia Ling added a “moment of truth” towards the end of the film: when the surroundings were full of farce and whirlpools, she hit the bottom infinitely, finally had enough of everything, and began to fight for herself. This is similar to the technique she used in “Hello, Li Huanying”, which belongs to her iconic tear moment.
At the end of the original movie, the heroine cried and went to dinner with the man who came back to find her. The ending of this Japanese tea-made rice flavor was adapted to be more self and female in “Hot and Hot”: Le Ying, who ran far away alone, was an unexpected surprise.
The topic that the movie can’t get around is about Jia Ling losing 100kg of weight. Compared with “Hundred Yuan Love”, “Hot and Hot” not only tells the story of the heroine Le Ying, Jia Ling is also writing her own story through this role and work.
The note of Hungry and Angry posted on the boxing gym in the original version became “you only live once”, which also corresponds to the English name “YOLO” (You only live once)
Although Jia Ling said directly that “the movie has nothing to do with weight loss”, just like the conversation between Le Ying and the coach in the movie, the other party/audience still accepts the information in their own way and understanding: the point is whether Jia Ling has lost weight or how much weight she has lost.
Le Ying said, “I want to take part in the boxing match”, and the other party directly understood it as “ah, I want to lose weight”. Le Ying repeated “no, I want to take part in the boxing match” again, which was skillfully echoed in and out of the play.
The film uses a montage of autumn, winter, spring and summer to show the transformation of Le Ying (Jia Ling). Seeing such intuitive and thorough changes on the big screen has a great impact. Jia Ling hardly tried any comedy performance in the whole movie (the jokes were all borne by other characters). From her listlessness and caution before her transformation to her determination and ruthlessness in her eyes and movements after her transformation into a qualified amateur boxer, not only her weight, but also her whole face and expression were completely new.
This change is also very tearful and embarrassing: Jia Ling and Ando Sakura are different. The latter completes a role and a work as an actor. She has won the recognition of major awards with her unique performance. At the actor level, she has achieved the best; and Jia Ling, as a director and screenwriter, bears the pressure of the creator and commercial pressure, “Hot and Hot” is not a small and beautiful independent work, but the only commercial film directed by a female in the most competitive Lunar New Year file. She needs to use the topic of “losing 100 pounds” to attract people to see what she really wants to express. She couldn’t pull a thousand pounds four or two, but used all her energy to turn the weight of this bag of cement into a weapon in order to attract more people’s attention.
In the interview, Jia Ling said that the corridor leading to the boxing ring was set to be 12 meters long. “this 12 meters may be (gone) a year or 42 years for me.”
Happily, on the day of its release, we learned that Sony Pictures had bought the global distribution rights of “Hot and Hot”-this was the first time that Sony had bought the overseas distribution rights without participating in the investment, which was a great affirmation of Jia Ling’s work. Before that, Sony also won the English remake copyright of “Hello, Li Ying, and Laura Kosann will be the adaptation job (in the past two years, three of her works have entered the” Hollywood script blacklist “, that is, the list of high-quality unproduced scripts), and Jia Ling herself will also be the producer. As a female creator, Jia Ling has been telling sincere and simple stories about her mother and herself. They are not complicated or great, but they can move people all over the world. If every work can take her to a farther and bigger place, it will be a blessing for Jia Ling and a female creator.
(Source: VOGUE)
