After "Babylon Berlin" and "1899", I finally waited for a sequel that didn't disappoint.
"The White Lotus," which premiered last year, appears to be about a group of wealthy people who "reveal themselves" at a resort. What resonates more generally is that it shows a group of people who want to go to "paradise on earth" to find happiness, but they can't find it. Even if their half-numbed minds are touched a little, they will return to their original state after the week's vacation is over.
"White Lotus Resort" Season 2 Poster
The first season took place in Hawaii, and the second season moved to Sicily, both of which are resorts with blue waters. In addition to last season's "relict" Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and her husband, this season adopts a new team, and the color of the character map is richer than that of the previous season. The top class with money and leisure has expanded from Tanya alone to a group of sensual dogs and horses. The leader claims to inherit a palace-like mansion, and cruises endlessly on the coast of Sicily by yacht. Two couples in their 30s and 40s came here for vacation together, and three men from three generations came to Sicily to "seek their roots". The proportion of middle and lower-level roles has increased significantly. The lonely female manager of the hotel, a pair of prostitutes, Tanya's young female assistant and the hidden male prostitute she met constitute all living beings outside the circle of rich people.
Stills of the second season of "White Lotus Resort"
One of the reasons I like this show is that it refuses to succumb to the poisonous wind of political correctness that floods literary works. The setting of "White Lotus" is actually very suitable for this set, but it ends at the end. All kinds of people who come and go here are ironic, compassionate and cute. The most innocent and kind-hearted young man among them was also covered with white and rigid paste. A capable and intelligent hotel manager is not all the light of modern women. Sometimes, like a man in power, she would use power for personal gain to satisfy her admiration for her female subordinates. Whores are not heartless, they are lovely young women, but they are very cunning.
"White Lotus" ridicules people and fully understands them. In the end, everyone is not who they were when they first appeared. It is good at capturing the moment when each character's mask is about to fall off. The whole play is made up of such moments, which is why the audience is often touched.
Everyone who comes to this luxury resort in Sicily comes with their own goals. Two couples who came together, the bond is that the two men were college friends. One is a talent in the financial industry who is investing, but he has not paid the money for prostitutes because the economy has already had problems and he came here for money. The other had just sold his start-up company for a huge sum of money, and the former invited the couple to travel to Sicily for the money in his hand. The three generations of grandparents and grandchildren are called Xungen, the old ones want to flirt everywhere by the way, and the middle-aged ones have already booked prostitutes to seek pleasure. Tanya wants to spend a ritualized "Romantic Day in Sicily" with her new husband. Her female assistant has been suppressed by negative news for a long time, and she wants to "find excitement" in the Italian sun. Prostitutes hang around, grabbing money. These people gathered at the White Lotus Resort, not to escape from life, but to come here quite actively with a heart of pursuit.
Stills of the second season of "White Lotus Resort"
This is a collection of short stories, and the screenwriter did not deliberately make a connection between several groups of people. Some important characters are still in a state of strangers until near the end. They wrote their own chapters, searching between the sunrise and sunset in Sicily, and they seemed to experience the pursuit and disillusionment within a few days with a tacit understanding, and suffered the damage of the relationship between people.
On stage, everyone comes with an "outside" vibe. They were nervous, wearing masks, talking and laughing loudly. One financial couple reinforces our image of the vain and brainless rich, while the other exudes the turbulent psychology of incoherence and class-jumping. Tanya was derailed or betrayed by her new husband, and she was even more confused than in the previous season. Her newfound entourage of gay local tycoons seems to be as vulnerable as she is, covering their decaying bodies with beauty and sex. The three generations of grandparents and grandchildren are all single, and they are unstable elements in the social sense. Two prostitutes walk between them, forming the most comedic plot of the season. "If there is a father, there will be a son, and there will be a grandson." The grandfather's comments are matched with the father's twitching face, and the grandson's "Aventure" is accompanied by music that repeats the same mistakes.
The characters below them, with whom they breathe the fresh air of Sicily. The screenwriter did not glorify them at all. The love affair between a female assistant and a wealthy male escort is extraordinarily powerful because of their vulgarity in all aspects from the outside to the inside. There are not many roles for female assistants, and she still portrays a youthful image in the age of social media who is resentful, thoughtless, and powerless to the depressed status quo. Burned out by her high-demand boss Tanya, she cries to friends about being "broken by years of negative press and social isolation." The solution is a hasty search for fresh flesh, which is understandable, but it doesn't help.
Stills of the second season of "White Lotus Resort"
The two seasons of "White Lotus" have set a time limit, and the holiday lasts for a week, and they leave within a time limit. Every sunrise and sunset is a countdown, implying that heaven will not always open the door for you. The advantage of having a clear time limit is that although what happens here is enough to make a TV series, it is difficult to shake the lives of the characters. The rich leave the island with a certain degree of brokenness, and will soon return to their original trajectory, laughing at the past of the tropical paradise. No matter how they secretly wrestle with each other, there is a thick layer of safety cushion to protect them. The two couples get along with each other at a high density every day, and the tension gradually fills up, but they know how to keep the inertia of the relationship going without making things clear. Although the three generations of grandparents have their own dissatisfaction, blood is thicker than water. They gritted their teeth and insisted on meeting every day to continue the vacation. Because the hourglass is ticking, the holiday will end.
For others, the situation is different. They don't count down. At every fork in fate, you need to seize the opportunity and decide the direction by yourself, so they show a high degree of persistence in what they are looking for.
The female assistant is as determined to seek pleasure as if grasping for a life-saving straw. A gang of hookers are living the life of nomads at a resort, precarious and wide-eyed hunters catching every opportunity. The hotel manager is fueled by lust, his whole body in uniform and high heels burning. The haste and desperation of these people, and the empty leisure of others constitute the two ends of the tension in "White Lotus". In some particularly well-crafted characters, these qualities coexist.
The second season of "White Lotus" has more female characters than male characters, the most outstanding of which are Tanya and Harper (Aubrey Plaza).
Jennifer Coolidge, who played Tanya, won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the previous season. She is like a female walrus that makes people unable to move their eyes, slow, funny, and teary-eyed. Sitting in the back seat of the motorcycle all in pink, she asked the female manager: "What do you think I look like?" The husband couldn't bear her eccentricity and changeability, and thought she was ashamed. The female assistant felt sorry for her and was oppressed by her all the time, she just wanted to escape for a while to catch her breath. She made her life a sleepwalking. After her husband suspected of having an affair, she sought spiritual help as she did in Hawaii last season. After the psychic told her about her unfortunate ending, Tanya murmured "too negative, too negative" and threw herself on the bed in self-hypnosis. She once mentioned the therapist she met in Hawaii and regretted not sponsoring her to open a treatment center at that time. Then he denied himself, no, no, that person is very good at psychiatric treatment, but she is too powerful, almost like a witch, "scares me".
Tanya is like a duckweed, her heart has nothing to do, and her days are miserable. She has the inflated ego of the extremely wealthy, expressing her heart and acting like no one else. There is also the self-pity and trepidation of the sad person, like a gorgeous balloon that bursts at the first poke. As soon as the prophecy that she would commit suicide came out, we who love Tanya also became like her, secretly waiting for her unfortunate ending. This is a person full of symbols, but no one has ever doubted that she is a person of flesh and blood.
Extreme wealth can make people mentally close to death, and screenwriter Jack White clearly believes it. Tanya's affluent origins have kept her in this state for a long time. Her new husband, at the beginning of this season, weirdly "takes two days off to deal with work". The husband tried his best to get her to send the little assistant away, and Tanya happened to meet a gay rich group who showed extraordinary enthusiasm for her, invited him to a yacht tour of the castle, and hinted that she could "die for beauty". Tanya is also very close to death in reality.
Another great female character is Aubrey Plaza as lawyer Harper. Harper is a middle-class intellectual elite with a conscience. He always mocks the arrogance and ignorance of his travel companions behind his back, insisting viciously that they will die quickly if they show their affection. She has an unhappy face and a standard middle class in American TV dramas-a great figure. The husband has just sold the company, and the husband and wife have become newly rich. Harper's own field of expertise is labor protection cases, and he specializes in fighting against the rich. She has a strong sense of superiority, thinking that she can see others clearly, but she is actually blind to herself. The couple, who used to talk about everything and were proud of their frankness and spiritual communication, came to the White Lotus, like a ship that suddenly stopped, and more and more suspicious objects emerged from the water.
In an unfamiliar environment, the proud Harper gradually lost control. She followed Daphne (played by Meghan Faye) to the castle overnight in a daze, and fell into the dream-hypnotic state brought by wealth. After that, she was temporarily "liberated" and drank and sold madly during the foursome. She plays the ostrich about her marital problems, skeptical but unwilling to admit it. It was the financial man she despised who touched her thigh under the dinner table, but it cannot be said that Harper was not tempted at all.
Tanya and Harper, who don't know each other, travel around Sicily every day in their skins, and their hearts are burning like a brazier.
The body and mind of the characters run counter to each other, giving "White Lotus" many opportunities to capture the moment when they are half-unmasked. Daphne, who looks very much like "Vase Wife", threw her mobile phone to Harper calmly and showed her "My Handsome Fitness Trainer". Harper picked up the phone and saw Daphne's child's face. "Did you make a mistake, this is your child." "Oh, I'll show you next time." The camera turned to Daphne's gloomy face, and she quickly returned to her normal appearance in just a split second. When the female manager of the hotel speaks close to the female subordinate, her face is distorted by the camera in front of her, and her desire has nowhere to hide. The whore who dreams of being a singer is the more innocent of the two. She was lying on the front desk with a drink in her mouth. One second, she eagerly asked the manager for a chance to sing on stage, but the next second she turned her eyes and asked her bluntly, "Are you gay?" Xu Yichunxiao exchanged conditions for a moment.
What connects these half-mask moments is the description of scenes as subtle as the psychological description of the characters. When the female assistant and the grandson of three generations were having an awkward love affair by the pool, the camera turned away, and a young white man from a small town in the pool went into the water, "The water is so cold that the nipples are about to freeze off." First impressions set the stage for the man who will provide the thrill-seeking female assistant with the cheap adventure she wants.
The good thing about this drama is that even if there is a big foreshadowing of a floating corpse on the beach at the beginning, you won't be too concerned about the suspense during the drama. Because whether it is the undercurrents between classes or the fluctuations of people's hearts, they are far more attractive than "who died in the end". We want to see the face under the mask, and the face under that face, rather than guessing at the final outcome.
From the first season to the present, what Jack White wants to portray is always the rich, the poor, and anyone. And what happened in a place like heaven. Real people are complex, impulsive, mean, and full of flaws. He does not deliberately show the so-called "brilliance of human nature", nor does he intend to make a growth story, but just tries to restore the true texture of people. A group of people doing innocuous, non-essential things at a resort, like most of our everyday behavior. They are actively trapped in paradise, like sea creatures floating with irresistible currents.
Occasionally, there are empty shots overlooking the current, which is the favorite metaphor of "White Lotus". It recognizes human spirituality, has a higher level of spiritual pursuit, and embraces the ever-surging undercurrent, showing the competition of various forces, and pulling people from the spiritual heights to the abyss. In White Lotus Resort, there are always conflicts between human nature, between people, and between classes, and there is little harmony. The few floating corpses are just the inevitable result of these collisions.
