Was the wife a teacher?
I recall that the wife was notified of her husband's death while she was teaching class. I thought she made knock off purses.
gc
Li Jing (Luo Haitao's sort-of girlfriend) worked in the factory. Lin Xue (Wang Ping's wife) was a teacher.
shareThanks,
And Luo Haitao was the factory owner, is that correct? If I recall, Luo gave Li a bag of money to hold after the factory was shutdown. Was the money mentioned later in the money?
Maybe you can answer another question for me. Sorry I don't recall all the names:
When the "detective" (Lin's boyfriend) introduced Lin to the gay "lover" at the mall, did the "detective" know that they already knew each other?
Thanks
Luo Haitao was the "detective."
I believe the factory owner's name was Mr. Ming (he doesn't have a credit in any of the English or French information I can find).
The gay lover was Jiang Chen.
The money was never really mentioned outright, but it (and Li Jing herself) may have been used to pay bribes to get Mr. Ming out of prison.
I'm not sure about your last question, because I don't remember Luo Haitao (detective) introducing Lin Xue (wife) to Jiang Chen (gay lover). Luo Haitao introduced him to Li Jing in the mall (and she was kind of clueless until she caught them kissing in the hotel), and Wang Ping introduced him to Lin Xue in the restaurant (and she knew that Wang Ping was sleeping with him by then), but I don't remember a scene where Luo Haitao and Lin Xue meet for anything more than reports on the surveillance.
However, I'm going to try to catch the movie again tomorrow, and I'll look out for that.
Okay, I think I see my confusion.
I'm mistaking the wife for Li Jing. So it wasn't the wife at the mall. I also thought it was the wife in the hotel. Where in the movie do they first establish the relationship between Luo Haitao and Li Jing. Did she ever accompany him during his investigation of the husband?
Thanks again.
Okay, I saw it again. Here you go: within the first ten or so minutes, Luo Haitao meets with Lin Xue and sends her the pictures from his cell phone. She leaves and starts crying. We cut back to him; he leaves and meets up with Li Jing, and they go back to an apartment and have sex.
Li Jing was never involved in the surveillance, and I doubt she ever knew of Luo Haitao's involvement with Wang Ping and Jiang Chen's relationship. She only sees the aftermath - which is like trying to describe a three-dimensional object using the shadow it casts.
POSSIBLE SPOILER:
However, it's clear that she *was* involved with Mr. Ming early on, and in fact she's in such bad shape when they go on the trip because she slept with Mr. Ming's business partner Qiang to get Mr. Ming out of jail, only to realize that Mr. Ming was using her.
This movie is SO much easier to follow when you know going in who is who; it's really a *very* good movie on the second viewing. I don't know what else was in competition, but I understand now why it won the screenwriting award at Cannes. It deserved it.
I also think a lot of the press around it (at least in the US and what I could read of the French) is really misleading.
POSSIBLE SPOILER:
Oh no, I think I am still off track. Near the end of the movie 3 people leave town (or take a "trip"). It was 2 males, the "detective" and the "gay lover", and a female. Was the female Li Xing? I thought it was the wife. Who killed the "gay lover"? I thought it was the female who went on the trip with them. But now I'm thinking it was the wife who some how tracked down the "gay lover."
Thanks for the great explanation.I need to see it again and I agree, familiarizing yourself with the characters before watching the movie, helps to follow the plot. Please recommend similar movies that you found just as good, or better.
Thanks again.
No: the three people on the trip were Luo Haitao (the detective), Jiang Chen (the lover), and Li Jing (Luo Haitao's girlfriend, who worked at the factory).
MORE SPOILERS:
Jiang Chen accidentally crossed paths with Lin Xue (the wife), who slashed him across the throat with the broken mirror. He was wounded, but did not die.
That's a very important transition point in the movie. All three of them went on that trip thinking that it would get them over the mistakes they'd all made. And it didn't.
YET MORE SPOILERS (and I don't know if you want to read this yet if you're going to see the movie again):
The mistakes (or at least my interpretation of them) are:
- Jiang Chen didn't fight for Wang Ping. He thought he could just replace a boyfriend with another boyfriend (Luo Haitao), and there are signs that that's how he normally gets over breaking up with boyfriends. What he didn't seem to understand until it was too late was that he actually was in love with Wang Ping.
(It *was* interesting that he wakes up when Wang Ping slashes his wrist, and the first sex he has with Luo Haitao would be about the time that Wang Ping died or right after...)
- Luo Haitao thought he could make up for indirectly causing Wang Ping's death by pursuing something with Jian Chen, when he was never really that interested in him, he just was curious about homosexuality.
- Li Jing thought that Mr. Ming loved her (she loved him), and let Luo Haitao take her on the trip because he was the "safe" boyfriend. (Obviously, he wasn't.)
After being slashed in the throat, Jiang Chen gave up on finding "true love and happiness" and settled for whatever life sent his way. (He even says, "I missed the love that was my destiny," meaning Wang Ping.) He ends up with the club singer, running a clothing store and having perfunctory sex.
That I think is the whole point: everyone goes through a springtime where the world seems new and anything's possible, and then reality comes crashing in and we spend the rest of our lives "settling."
Is the movie successful at showing all that? Hard to say. It's definitely hard, as a viewer who doesn't know Chinese, to follow everything that's going on (and I don't know if it would be much better knowing Chinese). The camerawork gets in the way sometimes. It takes several viewings to understand what's going on. But to me needing multiple viewings doesn't indicate how well made a movie is (and well-crafted movies hold up to repeat viewings), and the actual message here has a lot to say about being human.
I guess I liked it, warts and all, and I liked it better for seeing it again.
Thanks for the explanations. I will plan to see it again.
BTW, how did you make the red "Spoilers!" overlay on your responses.
Thanks again.
You'd use
<spoiler>Write your text to be hidden</spoiler>
but replace < and > with square brackets.
You can also click on "markup enabled" at the top of the message box; it will give you a list of all the different tags you can use in your text.
Re other movies like this (I didn't answer that before): Lou Ye is considered part of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers. I haven't seen much Sixth Generation (the Fifth Generation got a lot of international exposure, but their style is a LOT different), but you might look for some of those directors. You can start with Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Generation_(film_movement)) or your favorite online resource.
I definitely want to watch more of Lou Ye's films, though.
Wow, this movie sounds so confusing. Is it?
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