After watching "Snow Girl", the first reaction was "very strange", looking at the introduction of the "ski instructor sexually assaulted athletes" such a statement, suddenly felt confused. The obscure and almost imperceptible violation plot, coupled with the ambiguous relationship laid out later, makes the whole movie seem more like a "forbidden love" with a unbalanced relationship.
After looking back at the film's screening information and some reviews from others, I found that the source of this confusion lies in the deletion of important plots.
Looking at the length of only 81 minutes on the ticket stub and the 92-minute length of the film shown by the release information, the originally short film was cut by about one-nine, and a certain irony naturally emerged.
It's all in plain sight
Of course, leaving aside the deletion of this part, "Snow Girl" is still a very good work. In fact, there is not much dialogue, and many times a move and a look convey a lot of information, providing the audience with unlimited possibilities for deep thinking. I like the scene where the two lie in bed when their mother visits Leeds before the competition.
The mother was completely unaware of the sexual assault that had occurred and the stress and psychological blows her daughter had suffered, thinking that this was a normal pre-match stress release, but when Liz began to cry silently and tremble with her back to her, the mother began to realize that her lack of affection during her training had become the starting point for all of Leeds's emotional outbursts.
While she still didn't know any details of the training, as a mother she began to express her love and understanding, "I'm proud of you," and the mother who didn't smile on the phone and would only ask how Well Leeds was doing began to show her emotions and concern for her children.
Sometimes we almost forget that Liz is just a 15-year-old who aims to be a champion, but mentally she is still an adolescent girl who needs a lot of love and attention.
When her mother let her know to be loved and to be loved in peace and steadfastly, Liz decided to leave the false atmosphere created by Flanders, she no longer needed the coach to abuse under the guise of caring for her, she still shed tears with her back to her mother, but the two were no longer confrontational, but began to embrace each other, reaching a reconciliation that was still not mutually understanding but firm enough.
The complete journey is revealed in this scene, although Liz does not have a single line from beginning to end, the transformation of her growth, the decision to leave Coach Flanders, which laid the foundation.
Sexual assault and idealism, serious labor pain
Now that more and more sexual assault cases in sports have been disclosed, we have seen enough coaches, team doctors, and partners, and even the day before yesterday, the famous American gymnast Byers complained in Congress about the poor regulation of the US sports system.
What "Snow Girl" wants to show is undoubtedly this malice and illegal behavior hidden in the spirit of competition and the care of coaches.
And to weaken those serious, disgraceful violations to the point where one would mistakenly think that Liz's attachment to Flanders really stemmed from the adolescent girl's Oedipal complex is undoubtedly a dimensionality-reducing blow to the film's intentions.
This is a film that reminds you of the pain of reading "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise", the young girl and the goal she wants to achieve, the heart that is always overlooked in the family, one or two friends who understand her to not understand her, and a superior mentor who looks good enough, for Fang Siqi, she fills her hollowed out heart with literature and Li Guohua's talent, and for Liz, she chooses to numb her brain with skiing and the prospect of becoming a world champion.
Maybe Flanders is a very good ski instructor, coupled with Jeremy Reina's excellent performance, so that this character can not be faulted from appearance to ability, and even when he explains the aesthetics between menstruation and tides to Liz during the menstrual period, it will make people have to sigh for a moment that he is really romantic and knows how to respect and love his students, but it is this sugar-coated shell that looks good enough that the sexual assault needs to be dealt with more seriously.
Imperfect victims should be seen
As the cut section shows, Liz is not a "perfect victim", her active closeness to Flanders and the attachment and possessiveness shown after being violated will make people who do not know enough about the facts of sexual crimes misjudge this behavior as "like" or even "love", and when Liz wants Flanders to give a commitment, the other party's rejection almost makes people think that he is an occasional out-of-control decent gentleman.
But through the study of the victim's psychology, we will find that many times after being sexually assaulted, the vulnerable party often reduces the psychological harm to itself by convincing itself to like the other party - if you keep telling yourself "you like him", you can make the violated behavior more tolerant, after all, there is an emotional bond, although this bond is very hypocritical and fragile.
In the film, Flanders' help with Liz's skiing skills and the care of the details of life become a tool for Liz to paralyze herself, and at some point she even thinks that "it will be good to be together forever in the future", if it is a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship, it can rationalize their sexual behavior, if it is a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship, she can not live in guilt and regret.
But the perpetrator Flanders did not need this emotional bondage, his actions were based on the fact that his students won trophies, became champions, and made up for the skiing ideals that he had failed to complete because of a leg injury, and Liz was not chosen because of her specialness, but simply because Ofitz's grades were good enough and improved fast enough to seem to be the perfect tool to help him gain fame and fortune.
So on the pre-match training ground, when Liz's performance slipped after the violent emotional fluctuations caused by sexual assault, he would sternly tell her: "Hold your emotions, train well, I'm not your boyfriend."
Without more appeasement and reflection on his actions, he tries to cover up the crimes that have occurred with all the normal, and even proposes to let Liz live in the home closer to his life, vaguely fit the two-person world that Leeds wants, but in fact only makes more violations smooth.
The film has been in the clearest and most direct way to tear a sexual crime wrapped in honey and achievements to the audience, and after deletion, this has become a deformed story of "old cow eating tender grass" and "girl and uncle teacher-student love" that can be discussed well and is faced up to disappear into the editing and non-serious narrative, which is not only disrespectful to the film, but also a challenge to the moral bottom line.
As an international film exhibition occasion, the North Film Festival can actually distort the original meaning of the film to such an extent, which can be said to directly step on the art.
The beautiful scenery, exquisitely composed scenes, and the protagonist's silent and sound eyes in "The Girl Who Fell on the Snow" make this film's expressiveness burst, but unfortunately, its connotation of serious social problems has been rudely destroyed, which is worth regretting and regretting.