"Like, kiss, run": life is more amazing than movies

Oct 19, 2018

Many films that were included in the main competition this year have released resources one after another, such as "Burning", "Happy Lazaro" and "Midsummer". Compared with these films that have been praised by many film critics, my favorite is this one. "Like, Kiss, Run" by French director Christopher Honoré, about homosexuality.

If "Please Call Me By Your Name", which swept the world last year, is a summer love song for adolescents, then "Like, Kiss, Run" is a blue moonlight sonata of decadent middle-aged people.

This movie is sad and melancholy, but it is full of vitality. Friends who have read a lot of movies can see the shadow of many classic movies, including the most romantic encounter in "Love in the Trilogy", and "Stranger by the Lake". The fit of the body in "People" includes the dialogue of the "Little Bourgeois" in "Call Me by Your Name", which directly touches the soul, and the parting of life and death in "The Normal Heart".

The story of "Like, Kiss, Run" takes place in the 1990s when AIDS broke out. Jacques, a 35-year-old middle-aged writer, met Arthur, a 22-year-old college student while on a business trip in a foreign country. Facing the enthusiasm of the young Arthur, Jacques, who was short on time, always retreated and did not want to meet again. In Paris, he lived with his son Lulu and his friend Mathieu.

Until the death of his ex-boyfriend Mark due to AIDS, he destroyed Jacques, let him let go of his guard, and gradually accepted Arthur to welcome the arrival of death.

The most touching thing about the whole film is the delicate emotional journey of Jacques and Arthur.

Jacques's life is lonely, he no longer has any expectations of life, and Arthur, fresh and full of life, will take his lover's underwear, will hug him naked to sleep with his lover when he has a fever, and even think about it. A lover came to Paris for a year, as sweet as a Brittany bunny.

A young writer who came on a business trip, a young student who loves to read, an encounter in a movie theater in a foreign land began with lust. The cinema with changing light and shadow, the ambiguous eye movement, the tentative dialogue——

"I was thinking about going out when you came in?" "You stayed for me?"

"Life is more amazing than a movie" "Life is just stupider than a movie"

The whole film is in a blue tone, clean and sad, like a prose poem on the banks of the Seine. The two came to the river and began to understand each other.

The most delicate part is the reluctance and temptation of the two when they are about to part, one wants to stay, the other does not dare, they are as cute as two children.

It should have been just a beautiful encounter without the following, but because of a phone call from Jacques, the boundaries between the two were broken and the distance between them was shortened. From Ginsburg, Rimbaud, to Auden, Walter, a series of gay pioneers Arthur, the literary youth with the plot of the little bourgeoisie, was fascinated.

The two often communicated by letter, but they never saw each other again.

One is the young Arthur who is waiting for love, the other is the middle-aged Jacques who gave up his love because of loneliness and despair, one is moving forward, the other is retreating, on the way to find Arthur, Jacques turned around and gave up while crying. touch the hearts of the audience.

The first half of the film is the beginning of their love until the death of Jacques' ex-boyfriend Mark, which completely plunged Jacques into the haze of despair and suicide. He went to the hospital for examination alone, made appointments with various people, and cried when he remembered Mark in the bathtub. ...

Arthur finally came to Paris to find Jacques, but he didn't want to meet him because he was sick and made up lies, and he couldn't let go.

You see, even with such a sad tone, the French are so good at talking, describing the little details of these people in love, listening to him music, dancing for him, talking by the bedside of a sick lover, as long as I take off my arms After three days and three nights, your fever will subside.

Arthur would repeat in Jacques' ear, "You don't have to pretend you're dead to protect your loneliness" "I don't have general thoughts about you, but special thoughts."

These small life fragments and the whispers between lovers are the shining points that make Jacques regain his vitality.

The relationship between Jacques and Arthur, from being detached to being honest with each other, can be developed step by step.

When the two rely on the phone to communicate, Jacques told Arthur several types, Whitman is the best man, the wrong blond man is a fantasy existence in people's hearts, and Van der Park is flawed for others, but perfect for himself. At the time, Jacques said Arthur was his own Whitman.

However, at the end of the film, after Jacques makes Arthur's last phone call, Arthur sits alone outside the phone booth and waits. Realize, it turns out, that you are my Vandel Park.

In addition to the delicate description of love and life, the most pleasing thing about "Like, Kiss, Run" is the treatment of "same wife" and HIV.

In "Please Call Me By Your Name", the two male protagonists each have wives or girlfriends, and they were taken lightly in the movie, even in a state of being "concealed", but in this film, Asian Se confessed his orientation and past experiences to his girlfriend. This kind of "girlfriend feeling" that two people candidly treat each other makes people feel comfortable and happy.

The female character also has her own right to speak. After learning the truth, how her psychological state is presented, not as a background.

Jacques' ex-wife is also a dashing female figure who cares about the children and Jacques, even taking care of him in the hospital with Arthur when Jacques is ill.

In "The Normal Heart", HIV took away the last glimmer of hope in the lover's world. In "One Hundred and Twenty Strikes", the main competition in Cannes last year, HIV was the target of the rights protection organization's confrontation. Become the kind of "death notice" everyone is waiting for.

In this film, the presence of HIV is just a silent background to explain the fate of the protagonist, without rendering death and pain, and let everything return to peace and tranquility.

There are many fanfic plots in the movie, and those who love watching French movies must not miss it. For example, "Piano Lesson" was played in the theater where Jacques and Arthur met.

On the wall are posters for the stage play "Orlando" starring Huppert, "Sailor of Fog Harbor" and "Boy Meets Girl".

These detailed designs fully take into account the Parisian humanities and the context of the times. Classic posters, psychedelic music in the 1990s, and Truffaut's tombstone, the landscape attracts the audience's attention while reducing the sadness value brought by the text of the film, allowing the audience to focus on The emotional development of the two does not look at the homosexual group with a kind of "sympathy" and "selling miserable".