Luo Wenji's new play, this time I won't act in emojis

New Weekly

2024-06-12 21:03Published on the official account of Guangdong New Weekly

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

She has filmed the cute and cute Ms. Wenji in "Funny Family", and she is also the 20-year-old grumpy grandmother in "Strange Her", they are not mature adults. In the short bickering scene in the parents, she showed a vivid image of an elderly woman that transcended the tradition, so she won the love of a group of young audiences.

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

However, it wasn't until the filming of the new movie "Outing" released this year that Luo Wenji admitted that this was her "first work to fall in love with herself in more than 60 years of art". This time, she no longer tells happy stories. In the past, she was a living treasure emoji, but in this play, she incarnates as a late-age 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 the age of Sangyu. She and Kim Young-ok, another national grandmother of South Korea (who starred in the movie Kim Soon), played a pair of in-laws and old girlfriends who returned to their hometown after 60 years.

The movie footage circulating on social platforms is beautiful, but this is not a vacation movie, and the reason why Enxin went home to relax has a hidden gray factor - she wants to escape her son's "debt collection".

▲ "Outing"

Although Enxin's son has a family, he is a "giant baby". He is accustomed to his mother's care, and when he gets into trouble every now and then, he has to clean up the mess with kindness. This time, his son was involved in franchise store fraud and faced a collective lawsuit from 150 franchise store owners, and he was desperate. The son also intends to deceive Enxin with insurance money, savings and real estate.

Cruelty is another background color of this literary film. A woman's departure in her old age is no longer to escape from her husband and housework, but because of her son's boundless "oppression".

People who are floating in the wave of silver hair, in addition to facing the crisis of being gradually marginalized by society, also have to face the bitterness of not being understood by their families. The house is Enxin's last pension property, and after Enxin refused to sell the house to pay off the debt, the son not only took into account his mother's difficulties, but also blamed her in words, "You are my mother."

▲ "Outing"

Lo says that this role is the opposite of her, which allows her to open up her personal experience.

Enxin is not like Luo Wenji, nor is she like any noblewoman and living treasure grandmother of a well-off family she has played in the past. Kindness is the old age version of a good wife and mother. After the death of her husband, she exhausted her youth to raise her children, but in her son's heart, she has long taken her contribution for granted, and even death is no exception. He even secretly bought his mother a high death insurance to pay for his debts.

▲ "Outing"

Discouraged, Eun Xin decides to go back to his hometown to live with Kim Soon. However, when she got there, she found out that the seemingly cheerful Jin Soon also had his own crisis in his old age.

Jin Shun has lived in the village for half her life, and she is naturally reluctant to sell her land to developers who want to build a resort here. The son who wants to live in a high-rise building, so he dislikes his mother for blocking his wealth, and the dispute is out of control.

▲ "Outing"

One of the things that is not going well in life is that they all find that they have become too "old": there is no cure for Parkinson's disease, and they may all have to use wheelchairs in the future; And Jin Shun, who suffers from severe spinal disease, has to face the dilemma of slowly becoming paralyzed. At its worst, they held each other up and had difficulty getting out of bed.

For a moment, they seem to realize that if they can no longer provide "value", then death may be the only gift they can leave to others.

▲ "Outing"

"Outing" has a heartwarming name, but the story and ending told are never very warm. At the end of the film, after experiencing the death of a friend, the incomprehension of their children, and the decline of their health, the two strong grandmothers still chose to end their lives by "going up the mountain for an outing beautifully".

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

▲ "Outing"

In the face of their son's defeat, they can only vent and speak up for themselves through quarrels, but they are often defeated in front of traditional discipline.

The mother's role often contains a supporting function, she not only has to take care of the housework, but also has to maintain the "normal" operation of the family. Because of this, their son's "frustration" will make them unconsciously fall into self-blame.

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

But grandma's calmness is more due to reluctance to accept. Compared with absolute economic poverty, women in their twilight years are actually facing a kind of "multidimensional poverty". In addition to the material, it also contains various dimensions such as health and spirituality. Poor relationships with family members, loss of voice in social spaces, and imperfection of public welfare are all factors that constitute multidimensional poverty.

▲ "Outing"

Actually, Eun Xin and Jin Soon are not so short of money. What they lack is love, understanding and recognition of their self-worth. For the elderly, getting old is sometimes a shame. I remember that in the micro-documentary "The Joys and Sorrows of China's Elderly Care", a grandfather in a nursing home described himself as follows: "It's over like me, and you have to trouble others."

▲ "The Joys and Sorrows of China's Pension"

Detached from the primitive society that needed to cooperate with each other in hunting, modern society is a society with a high degree of worship of individual ability under the development of capital industry.

Growing old means that you are no longer able to work and can no longer exchange for living materials like young people. When a "non-working" person in his later years traps himself in the algorithm, he can easily think of himself as a "person who has lost his value".

In addition to this, there is "social isolation". In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) released the Advocacy Brief: Social Isolation and Loneliness among Older Persons, which showed that social isolation and loneliness among older people is a common problem worldwide.

Social isolation is different from loneliness, which is a subjective feeling of an individual, while social isolation refers to the objective loss of connection between a person and society. Although they maintain a certain degree of socialization, they actively or passively become small and transparent due to the remoteness of their residence or electronic life.

▲ "Outing"

In "Outing", Eun Xin and Jin Soon went to McDonald's for dinner, and Eun Xin's ability to order food smoothly with the electronic screen made Jin Shun sigh "worthy of being a woman living in the metropolis". The director did not blatantly show Grandma Kim Soon's discomfort in the face of modern society, but her cute lines also seem to imply 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." It ended beautifully, but not pretty. After watching the whole film, some people say that they wish it was just an ordinary picnic, and the grandmothers may just be stuck and wait for a while to start again.

▲ "Outing"

But the question is, even if they choose to live again, where is their end?

Contents: Rich white card

Editor: Felicia

Typesetting: Yang Panpan

Title image: "Outing"

View original image 524K

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