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The fruit of passion /o's story continues

Shanghai Alien Prostitute House: Alien, Different Colors, Different Feelings

The fruit of passion /O's story continues

Japan/France 198 1 year.

Director: Ji Shu Sishan

Starring: klaus kinski klaus kinski

Isabel Ellis Isabelle Illiers

In Shanghai in the 1920s, the situation was chaotic and the revolution was quietly brewing. Stephen came here with O, a completely obedient French girl who silently loved him, and experienced the "crazy world and the power of love".

The prostitutes in this brothel come from various countries, and Mommy is a western man dressed in women's clothes, which is extremely enchanting and charming. Whenever it is open, prostitutes wear colorful and strange clothes, receive some familiar or unfamiliar guests, and satisfy their own and guests' passions in well-designed appliances and atmosphere.

Behind the brothel is a low and narrow slum, and the window of Room O faces a restaurant, which is also the secret stronghold of revolutionaries. On the first day of O's arrival, the boys working in the restaurant saw her standing in front of the window, and immediately fell in love with her inexplicably and began to send her flowers.

After being possessed by Stephen's violence, O began to receive guests. Every time, Stephen hides behind the retractable peeping window. Under the double gaze of Stephen's photos posted on the wall and his hidden eyes, O indifferently experienced the love desire in his body, being stimulated, used and deprived.

Stephen met his old lover Natalie in Shanghai and took her to spy on O's sexual intercourse with his guests. One day, Stephen took Ou to see Natalie. After dinner, Stephen locked naked O in front of the mirror and made love to Natalie on the bed in Room O. O looked at them sadly and said to himself that he liked my silence.

Stephen secretly contacted the revolutionaries to provide them with funds. In order to earn money and go whoring, the boy began to take part in revolutionary activities. After attacking the police station, the injured boy met O. In the declaration of boy's love, O no longer refused coldly. She smiled for the first time in physical contact and captured her feelings fiercely. Stephen is still watching from behind the peeping window.

At the lively wedding of Japanese prostitute Shakayali, a mysterious figure told O that Stephen killed the boy and tried to commit suicide. She fainted, a contract fell to the ground, and she was free. When she woke up, there was no one around, no prosperity, no dreams. She is alone in a strange and desolate foreign land.

The Story of O is a famous French sadomasochism novel, which has been put on the screen many times. O in the novel, like her name, is a symbol of silence and lack of femininity, a symbol of acceptance and obedience. She simply complied with men's lust and let herself go in the abnormal torture, thus experiencing strange satisfaction. 198 1 Japanese director Ji Shu terayama uses one of the characters to shoot this novel, which has little direct relationship with the novel in the plot, but only creates a personal erotic and exotic fantasy space through its strange love and mysterious core.

The language used in this film is deliberately complicated. Voice-over narrators use French, O and other prostitutes' inner monologues in their own mother tongue, and people of different nationalities talk in English. In the background, the Shanghai revolutionaries used Japanese, which made the audience in China inexplicably uncomfortable. However, this language strategy is just suitable for the film's appeal for "strangeness", which is deliberately strange and bizarre.

At the beginning and end of the film, a series of black and white photos about China in the late Qing Dynasty are displayed, including towers, prisoners with flail and surging crowds. These China scenes, which are obviously incompatible with historical time, once again show that this is a story in an illusion and a dream, which takes place in a pornographic place as the prototype. The so-called Shanghai, the so-called times and revolution, is just a legendary background, a convenient exotic symbol, and an imaginary hint about the East and pornography.

The brothel in the film fully concentrates the exotic scenery. In its elaborately decorated vestibule, there is a mirror embedded, a row of beautiful women with moon cards are hung on the wall, and a big red and green parrot stands in the cage. The prostitutes were expressionless, and their clothes were covered with tassels, ribbons and tulle. At its entrance, there is an Indian doorman, and in every room, there are Arab handyman and thugs. In the prostitute's room, there are all kinds of exotic special activities, which are cleverly designed and exquisitely made to satisfy the guests' imagination.

Before the film begins, Baudelaire's poem is quoted as an inscription, which is a sentence in Meditation, "... whipped by a happy and heartless butcher", and the poet mocks the world's pursuit of vanity for men and women. Used in this film, the first is the preview of the relevant plot, but also the hint of the overall sadomasochism color. So in the process of narrative development, the film shows many beautiful and even gorgeous sexual assault images. Disobedient prostitutes were tied to shiny movable steel frames and whipped by thorny rose bouquets; Hanging flat in mid-air by a belt, being ravaged by several big men; Prostitutes are called mothers by clients and beg for mercy while being beaten; All this and so on. On the other hand, Baudelaire's poems also imply the unreality of the film. The story of long-distance love between men and women, which unfolds at a slow pace, is just a long erotic dream of the director or O.

From this perspective, we can forgive some rigidity and naivety of the film. Such as artificial piano music and soprano songs from time to time, as well as too direct symbolic shots and abstract monologues throughout. Because in the dream, all this is understandable and even inevitable. In the dream, every little thing has a "hidden meaning" to be solved, and the same thing will appear repeatedly after deformation and displacement; In a dream, one's wishes or fantasies will come true, and the scene of the dream will change instantly. Also at the beginning and end of the film, the difference between two empty mirrors showing the streets of Shanghai also shows dreams and awakening. At first, with the sound of the piano, we saw from O's eyes the low shacks and narrow streets, the porters and dogs sleeping by the river, the old woman sitting under the poster of the museum like a woodcarving, the rickshaw running around, and the naked boys and girls catching a goose at the gate of the temple. These are legendary and eternal China. Finally, when O woke up, the camera rolled away from his eyes. The same shed and street, the same brothel lobby, dark and deserted.

The director seems to want to give a reasonable explanation to the abnormal behavior of the characters in Freud's way, so he uses many shots to show the memories and hallucinations of O, Stephen and Japanese prostitute Shaqiyali. For example, O was abandoned by his father in a box painted with chalk when he was a child. Shakeyali's father pretended to be a dog because she was drunk and forgot to buy toys for her children. Stephen suddenly saw O tied to a bed on the roof when he was watching O having sex with a guest, and birds were flying around singing. When switching to these scenes, there is usually an overexposed white in the lens, and then it gradually blends into the psychological scene. This technique also properly shows the relationship between love and love.

In the film, O has a mysterious connection with Stephen. In retrospective explanation, he is body double of O's father, just like the huge and weird ring and bronze nails on O's finger. But in the narrative of the film, Stephen shows the split and projection of O desire. There was a strange sense of repetition and uncertainty at the beginning of the conversation between two people in the dark field. They asked each other, "Where are we?" O complained that there was no mirror in the house, but when the mirror appeared, its function was not to reflect the figure of the owner, but to become a torture device for Stephen to bind O. In the gap of O's body, Stephen and Natalie who had sexual relations were reflected, and the symbol of narcissism in the mirror was transformed into a symbol of externalization of desire. Later, it was after the mirror was broken and the photo that Stephen hung on the wall was torn off that Stephen's own eyes became unimportant, and O experienced desire and satisfaction in himself. So Stephen pushed the door open in retaliation for jealousy, but what he saw was a raging sea, which he never showed up after killing someone. O in life, these two men imprisoned and released her desires respectively, and disappeared at the same time, leaving her alone in the nightmare of waking up.

In the film, the police station captured by revolutionaries has the word "Hong Kong" on the sign at the door, which is a small goof. But there is no need to be demanding, because in the final analysis, this film is just a double exquisite display of the wonders of the East and the wonders of the West. As far as this function is concerned, Shanghai in the 1920s was exactly the same as Hong Kong since then, and the East and the West blended together, full of various "different" adventures.