So far, the domestic youth films released in theaters this year are all like Sisyphus, doing an eternal vain work of rolling stones up the mountain, repeating: keep releasing, bringing disappointment again and again, continuing to release… Such a cycle.
The newly released comic film “Friends of the Week”, although it has reached the highest score in the youth film track for half a year: Douban scored 4.8 points, it still failed to break the cycle of bad films – failed to reach the passing line. “Secret Love: Orange Born in Huainan”, which was released two weeks earlier, only got a score of 4.6 despite the blessing of Chang’an’s “Zhenhua Trilogy” IP in August. If you push the timeline further, you will find “I Really Hate Long-distance Relationships” with a score of 4.5 and “Wen Ruyan” with a score of 2.8…
The market of domestic youth films: “a little certainty” amid huge uncertainty
When most other types of films choose to withdraw and postpone, the choice of youth films to still be released on schedule even makes people taste a little “lonely brave”.
First of all, the choice of this kind of film arrangement and release is not unrelated to the impact of the epidemic. From the perspective of cost, youth romance films are small in size and the audience is concentrated, which makes youth films and romance films more “certainty” in the film market where they are afraid to confirm the schedule and repeatedly modify the schedule: Youth love stories always have an audience. In this regard, Lin Xiaoqian, director of “Friends of the Week”, has a unique and accurate observation:
“Youth films are actually a very niche subject matter. They are particularly targeted and mainly focus on young people aged 16-18. The box office share is about 6%-10%. Mainland youth films usually It’s not a ‘youth film’ in the strict sense, most of it starts with youth, and the main part of the latter part is still about the loss, regret, and reunion of the characters after they become adults. They are just mourning youth, not a youth film in the strict sense.”
This template is exactly the two- or three-stage structure shared by the above-mentioned domestic youth films: the plot is relatively neatly divided into student days (middle school, university) and after work. Among them, campus time and space provide youthful imaginations for audiences who want to be nostalgic, pure, hot, and beautiful; social time and space are connected to the story script of “reality”.
For the audience of domestic dramas who are tired of the bloody and painful youth routines of “To Youth”, the beginning of “Youth” and the type of youth films mean a promise: the script of the love story here is purer, more enthusiastic, Fuller and more concentrated. The script of its dialogue and comparison is a love story that meets as an adult, and the audience pays and buys tickets for the youth film just to see the “promise” of the young heart.
So, what is the difference between these two love scripts?
Today, when love myths are becoming more and more difficult to tell, people no longer believe in the stories of self-defeating for love. Not only because the temperament of the times changes quietly, but the logic of devoting oneself to love and righteousness will be rejected by contemporary people who precisely hedge risks and balance returns: indulging in feelings is a “love brain”, while the new “values are correct” is “” Love yourself” and “make money”. The new rule for young people to grasp both love and career is: use the “love brain” to treat work, and use the “career brain” to treat love – the subtext is that you no longer need to be distracted when dealing with love.
Just as the philosopher Han Bingzhe’s description of eroticism – “no longer defending one’s own position, but losing one’s self in the other and for the other”, it is the judgment of the times for the “love brain”. At the same time, the other side of reality is that both the spiritual world and the fault-tolerant space are constantly squeezed by fatigue, and the option of “sweet moon and snow” in front of every ordinary person who has worked hard to live and is exhausted is emotional, emotional, and costly. like a luxury item.
When love and righteousness are greatly suppressed and expelled in the logic of reality, the choice of youth films and romance films becomes a very low-cost compensation: there is no need to bear the consequences of heartbreak, and there is no need to reduce a person’s unhindered To be happy, there is no need to deal with the quarrels and run-ins that must exist in a relationship in the gap between tired enough work and life. The audience does not have to “sign and draw” the cruel contract of love in real life. As long as they pass the story of no more than two hours, they can experience or remember the most intense heartbeat in their youth – not a prudent choice after weighing the pros and cons, even in The moment I decided to like it, I couldn’t see anything clearly, but it was the heartbeat of the electric light flint, and it was enough to like it.
Therefore, youth love stories will always have audiences.
The plight of domestic youth films: exhausted between dog blood and small freshness
Let’s talk about “Secret Love: Orange Born in Huainan”, as the third film and television adaptation of Chang’an’s novel of the same name in August, it did not give any surprises beyond the previous two drama versions.
The story script of “Secret Love: Orange Born in Huainan” is neatly stepping on the “template” mentioned above. The “secret love” in youth may not be painful or chaotic, but its influence can extend to adulthood: we never outgrow highschool. This “don’t leave” means that some regrets may turn into obsessions in many times of “die without a disease”, sinking into our subconscious, and then affecting our behavior and preferences.
“Secret Love” is the most moving point of the film’s story, and it is also where it distances itself from industrial saccharin and sweet pet school stories. The heroine Luo Zhi’s secret love, with a hint of paranoia and stubbornness, is like her own battle epic, grand, long and silent. Luo Zhi’s approach to Sheng Huainan was a “competition of one person” in adolescence: imitating him, surpassing him in grades, and trying his best to “run into” him, all his efforts were nothing more than to make himself seen by him. In the process, Luo Zhi’s “self” was also shaped.
And making the person you like in adolescence a part of your “self” is one of the most advanced rhetoric of youth romance.
The youth epic of a girl “alone”, such a story, the cost of understanding and watching is very high – too poetic, and the storyline is too flat, which is why the three editions are not satisfactory. After the film chooses the beautiful filter of youth, it picks up the conflict between the hero and heroine’s family feud as the main line to promote the second half of the plot: Luo Zhi’s father died of a work injury, and Sheng Huainan is the son of the enemy, and Luo Zhi’s mother Years of complaints have become the cause of the collapse of the Sheng family. The following plot took a sharp turn: jail, take exams, be expelled…
In the fresh and pure story, a dog-blooded story called “The Director’s Version of Romeo and Juliet” is grafted, which makes the story logic of “Secret Love: Orange Born in Huainan” extremely divided and difficult to understand. In particular, the narration in the first half is blessed by the fresh camera language, which will give people a sense of awkwardness that the goods are not right. There is only one sentence: too much, too drama for me.
The just-released “Friends of the Week” was also pulled in two auras, and presented as a failed adaptation.
Hazuki Matcha’s original animation was to borrow a fictional illness to discuss the meaning of “friend”. The original story is this: Kaori, an ordinary high school girl, suffers from a rare disease and can only maintain her memory for a week. Once a good friend and happy things, as long as a week is up, they will all be forgotten. With such pain, Kaori suppressed her feelings, put on a cold mask, and lived a lonely life. Living alone. Kaori’s strange character makes Yuuki, a cheerful and optimistic boy, very curious, and he takes the initiative to approach Kaori and make a request to become friends. Knowing Kaori’s condition, Yuuki did not retreat. Week after week, he relied on his kindness to become friends with Kaori again and again. born among the children.
This kind of small incision, small setting, and small fresh two-dimensional story, what the audience cares about is not why the memory returns to zero on time every week, but the warm daily life under such a setting. Although there is an amnesia setting as a gimmick, such a plot design is also not suitable for being adapted into a dog-blooded routine with wide-ranging and extreme conflicts. But the movie version of “Friends of the Week” just chose a three-dimensional logic that is infinitely close to “real”, and constantly turned the “amnesia stalk” as a suspense. Accidental drowning, the pain and helplessness of campus violence, and finally the logic of “for your own good”.
So many bloody “original” plots, and the misunderstanding and bitterness logic of abuse for abuse, may have been established on the market side when director Lin Xiaoqian directed “A Story More Sad than Sadness”. However, in a campus pure love story that the audience expects to be Xiaoqingxing and healing wind, it will not be paid for. The reason is also because of the vagueness and drift of the movie’s positioning: between Xiaoqingxing and dog blood abuse, the story is exhausted. The tone cannot be “both and want”.
This kind of splitting or incompatibility problem also appeared in other youth romance films that failed to pass the passing line in the past six months. The formula of love + elements, fill in the elements: secret love, lovelorn, long-distance relationship, or amnesia, although it can produce a new youth love story in an assembly line, coupled with a lyrical OST to deliver the golden sentence to the market “Let it go is life, Can’t let go is youth” “Confession is not stupid, it is a clear conscience”. However, the story of “Love for the Slogan” lacks reasonable logic and cannot reach people’s hearts after all.