A Comparison of Narrative Methods between the Novel and the Film Adaptation of Rouge Buckle

The author of " Rouge Buckle " is Li Bihua , who is known as "the first person in Hong Kong romance novels ". The novel tells the love entanglement between Ruhua, a young woman from a brothel, and Chen Twelve Shao, a son of a wealthy family. In 1988, director Guan Jinpeng adapted Li Bihua's novel "Rouge Button" into a film of the same name, which caused great repercussions once it was released. From a narrative perspective, we can explore the differences between the film version and the novel version of "Rouge Buckle" in terms of narrative perspective, character, and narrative level. We can feel the different artistic charms of the film and the novel.

1. Narrative point of view

Novels often tell stories in the first or third person. This way of narration can freely express the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist. Through the first-person narration of the novel, readers can experience the entire development of the event. Movie narrative is more flexible than novel narrative. Movies tell stories through moving lenses and vivid images. This is called "impersonal narrative", "refers to the absence of a clearly identifiable narrator's voice as a narrative source in the narrative text of the film. ".

The novel "Rouge Buckle" written by Li Bihua adopts the narrative perspective of the first person (that is, the male protagonist Yuan Yongding). Through Yuan Yongding's first person narrative, we can truly experience the emotional changes between him and his girlfriend Ling Chujuan, as well as his love for Ruhua. hazy feelings. As Yuan Yongding said in his self-introduction, he is a person who does not understand romance in life, and Yuan Yongding's girlfriend often complains about this. When a glamorous woman in a 1930s cheongsam and a 1930s hair bun appeared in Yuan Yongding's newspaper office, Yuan Yongding was surprised and deeply attracted by the flowery temperament. In the novel, readers follow Yuan Yongding's perspective, and while searching for the whereabouts of the twelve young masters within the time limit, they review the life and death love between Ruhua and the twelve young masters. In the development process of the story, Yuan Yongding was deeply touched by seeing Ruhua's dedication to love, and his personality and attitude towards love gradually changed. Although he is still a material Hong Kong citizen living in reality, he will not be like Ruhua. People in that era can also sacrifice for love, but they began to cherish their relationship with their girlfriends and felt the importance of each other.

One of the artistic features of Guan Jinpeng's films is the female perspective. "Rouge Button" is developed from the perspective of a brothel woman like a flower. But instead of telling the story in the first person, it adopts non-personal narration, that is, a "zero degree" personal narrative method, which uses the alternate conversion of shots to narrate the film, and puts more shots on Ruhua to highlight The tragedy of this woman's love. Anita Mui played Ru Hua and Leslie Cheung played Chen Twelve Shao as the protagonists of the film, while Yuan Yongding and A Chu became the supporting roles of the film. Ruhua, an amorous woman from the red dust, encountered various difficulties in finding the Twelve Young Masters in the world. Fortunately, Yuan Yongding and A Chu helped to resolve them. Although the film ended with a tragic ending, through the lens, the film created a plump tragic brothel woman image of.

By comparing the changes in the narrator's perspective of the novel version and the movie version of "Rouge Button", we can see that the writer Li Bihua and the director Guan Jinpeng are different in the portrayal of characters. Li Bihua uses the male protagonist Yuan Yongding as the first-person narrative. From his perspective, readers can witness the tragic love story of Ruhua and Chen Twelve Shao, and realize the male protagonist Yuan Yongding's rethinking of love. Guan Jinpeng shows his tragic experience through the female perspective of Ruhua, which can arouse the sympathy of the audience.

2. Characters

In terms of character building, novels and movies present completely different forms of expression. "The novel has formed a clear and in-depth writing idea in terms of revealing the psychological motivation of the characters, penetrating the spiritual soul of the individual, and contemplating the philosophy of life." The novel uses the first person to narrate the story, and readers can clearly grasp the hero Yuan Yuan through the psychological description of the novel. Changes in Yongding's character and attitude towards love.

Yuan Yongding was originally an ordinary citizen of Hong Kong who was not romantic enough and not considerate enough with enough "steadiness". Before he met Ruhua, he lived in a small working circle, earning a stable salary by just living, and he was not interested in life and life. Love is an attitude of being at ease. This kind of living situation is exactly what is prevalent among this generation of Hong Kong youth. Yuan Yongding was tangled again and again, and warned himself not to meddle in his own business, and not to feel that this beautiful woman was pitiful and violated his principles of doing things, but Ruhua's hard pleading and persistence moved Yuan Yongding, so he finally decided to help him find ten. The whereabouts of the second young. From the moment Yuan Yongding decided to help Ruhua, his character and attitude towards love have begun to change. Facing his girlfriend A Chu with a strong personality, Yuan Yongding was completely unable to cope with their quarrels before, but after learning about Ruhua's emotional experience, he began to cherish his relationship with his girlfriend. After the quarrel, he could think of buying gifts to make his girlfriend happy. It can be seen that Yuan Yongding has gradually changed due to the influence of flowers, and has become more responsible for men.

In the movie "Rouge Buckle", Ruhua's character is clearly displayed. Her status as a prostitute does not allow her to show her true feelings, but when true love comes, Ruhua can even sacrifice her own life without turning back. Even if she drugged the Twelve Young Masters and died together, everything she did was to protect this feeling. This action shows The helplessness of a sentimental woman with a weak heart. The film portrays Chen Twelve Shao as a handsome and wealthy child of a wealthy family. He launched a romantic pursuit of Ruhua, which made Ruhua deeply trapped and unable to extricate himself.

In the film, Chen Shishishao's character is hidden. What the audience sees is his surface, but we have no way of knowing his heart. When the film finally told the audience that Twelve Shao lived and got married and had children, the surprised audience knew that Chen Twelve Shao was a person who was greedy for life and feared death and was unfaithful to love. Chen Shishishao longed for free love, but when faced with the choice of life and death, he backed away. After he was rescued, he did not choose to commit suicide to defend his oath with Ruhua, but rather to live forever.

Yuan Yongding and A Chu's characters in the film are not as full as they are portrayed in the novel. In the film, they are flower-like helpers, and their roles as supporting roles make Yuan Yongding's honesty and kindness and A Chu's hot-heartedness unable to be fully reflected.

Due to the limitation of the length of the film, the director had to choose the most important storyline to express the theme of the film. When we watch the movie "Rouge Buckle", we feel that the plot development is a bit rushed. Eager to show a complete emotional line, speeding up the development of the story, ignoring the integrity of the story, which has become the shortcoming of the movie "Rouge Buckle".

The novel has enough space to enrich each character's character, and enough time to explain the cause, process, and result of the story. After the novel is adapted into a movie, the characters are often not as full as the characters in the novel, and the audience cannot deeply understand the inner activities of the characters.

3. Narrative level

"In narratology, it is impossible for any narrative to proceed at the same level of fiction, and any narrative text has two or more levels of narrative, one is the level of fictional events, and the other is the level of narrative events." "In modern times In novels , characters have long been shaped by narrative layers. The main narrative layer, sub-narrative layer, and smaller sub-narrative layers form intertextual relationships of different natures.” Because movies and novels belong to different artistic categories, novels go through movies. After the adaptation, the primary and secondary narrative layers are often reversed.

The narrative level of the novel "Rouge Buckle" has changed after the film adaptation. In the novel, the main narrative layer is the flower that Yuan Yongding and his girlfriend help to find a lover in the world. The secondary narrative layer tells the love story of Ruhua and Twelve Shao through Ruhua's memories. On the main narrative level, the novel emphasizes the difficulty of finding the Twelve Young Masters. Yuan Yongding went to the library of the Great Hall to check information and was regarded as a pervert. Yuan Yongding was so concerned about Ruhua's affairs that his girlfriend A Chu was jealous and quarreled with him. Yuan Yongding participated in the "3877" license plate auction to find clues, but the clues were interrupted because the asking price of the license plate number was too low to be auctioned. Finally, a clue was found in the yellowed "Tianyou Bao" in an antique shop, and it turned out that Chen Twelfth Shao was still alive in the world. When Ru Hua was so heartbroken that he was about to give up searching for the Twelve Young Master, Yuan Yongding found the whereabouts of the Twelve Young Master through the BB machine. The final outcome is that the flowers disappear with the smoke. As for whether the flowers meet the old twelve young masters, the author leaves a blank for the readers to imagine freely.

On the sub-narrative level, the novel tells Yuan Yongding about her own experiences through flowers in the sun, allowing readers to understand the emotional entanglement between her and Chen Twelfth Shao. Readers will not have too much sympathy when reading about their love between life and death, because in the novel, the twelve young masters finally choose to break up with Ruhua. Ruhua said that she met with the twelve young masters to die in love, but in fact, Ruhua gave her to the twelve young masters. Take deadly medicine. Seeing that Ruhua loses her mind for love, readers feel more worthless for this silly woman. In the movie "Rouge Buckle", Guan Jinpeng tells the story from a feminist perspective. What he wants to show is the love between Ruhua and Chen Twelve Shao, so the main narrative layer is the love memory of Ruhua and the twelve young masters. The director used poetic pictures to show the twelfth young man's frown, smile and flower-like every move in front of the audience delicately, making the audience feel the persistent but cruel side of the flower. one side. The director did not want to praise the flowers and criticize the twelve young men blindly, but let us realize that no one is right or wrong in the face of love, but when the truth cannot resist the reality, the two chose different paths to commemorate. past love.

On the sub-narrative level, due to the limitation of the length of the film and the need to highlight the key points of the film, the director shortened the process of finding the twelve young masters, and used fast-forward footage to quickly transition the 7-day time limit to the deadline. The movie also changed the agreement of the novel "3877" to "3811", so that Ruhua waited for the twelve young masters at the old place at 11:11 pm on March 8th. The author believes that the director's change is to create a gloomy and eerie atmosphere to render the identity of the female ghost like a flower. When she saw that the person she once gave up her life to protect became the ugly wrinkled old man in front of her, she put the rouge button, the token of love, on the hand of the Twelve Young Master, and disappeared in the smoke .

The difference in narrative level between novels and movies makes readers and audiences focus differently. In the novel, readers pay more attention to the difficulty in finding the Twelve Young Masters on the main narrative level. Because novels and movies have different audiences, writers and directors have different starting points, resulting in many differences in the artistic expression of novels and movies.

4 Conclusion

The novel "Rouge Button" by Li Bihua not only shows a tragic story to readers, but also raises a real question. When faced with emotional setbacks, couples in reality will defend the so-called love through the extreme method of sacrificing love. , through the modern concept of love between Hong Kong citizen Yuan Yongding and Ah Chu, we have found the answer. The film "Rouge Buckle" directed by Guan Jinpeng was adapted on the basis of the original work, and the highlight is the strange and tragic love between Ruhua and Twelve Young Masters. By reading novels and watching movies, we can feel the difference in emphasis between novels and movies at the narrative level, and experience different artistic charms. Adapting novels into movies has long been a common phenomenon in current cultural communication. For example, the film "Youth" directed by Feng Xiaogang , adapted from Yan Geling 's novel "Youth", has attracted widespread attention in the cultural and film circles. Although the limited duration of the movie affects the integrity of the novel's story, and the characters' personalities are not as full as in the novel, we can't help but see the film's involvement in the novel to varying degrees, which has a two-way promotion effect on the film and learning. The adaptation of a novel into a movie can draw more audiences to the novel itself, and the novel can gradually reach more people through the promotion of the movie, rather than being limited to the vision of a certain group of people. So to a certain extent, the adaptation of novels into movies is conducive to the mass communication of literary works.

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