"The Barbarian Invasion" is the film that won the jury award at the 2021 Shanghai International Film Festival. It was unforgettable at the first sight, and it has always been an interesting movie that I have been talking about crazy about Amway to my female friends in recent years. Nowadays, we can see such films being released in theaters. Although there are pitifully few films, it can still be regarded as an annual surprise in private viewing experience.

Invasion of the Barbarians poster

I am willing to spare no effort to amuse it, because such a movie is so special, it is vivid, free, resolute and gentle. Romance films, action films, comedies, literary films, dramas within plays, meta-films, semi-autobiographical... It seems that there are many appearances that can be seen in this movie, and it seems that they cannot be summarized.

More importantly, it is a movie that can bring a real sense of "power" after watching it. Compared with countless high-sounding empty slogans, all the "personal actions" of the heroine in the film are more persuasive.

In the movie, there is a male director who uses Miyamoto Musashi to compare swords with young people, and wins the victory by killing the young opponent with blinding sunlight. The title of the story is, "For young people, the sword is everything. For young people For the old Miyamoto Musashi, everything is a sword." Then the director who told the story extended to his own perception, "In the past, movies were everything. Now, everything is movies."

"Barbarian Invasion" stills

The philosophical implication of seriousness is quickly dispelled in the actress's subsequent sentence "So we are going to make a Hong Sang-soo movie?" A little tacit understanding between them.

When the movie began to be screened, it coincided with the firepower of "Barbie" relaying "The Missing She" to seize the topic of women in theaters. "The Barbarian Invasion" presents another real and "dreamy" female situation and answer questions, so that after the Beijing premiere, the film was evaluated by several male directors of literary films "Asian Barbie". When you think about it carefully, this evaluation is really appropriate and interesting.

The title of "The Barbarian Invasion" is a reference to the German female philosopher Hannah Arendt's "The birth of every child is a barbarian invasion of civilized society", and it is also based on the life of director Chen Cuimei experiences and feelings.

"Barbarian Invasion" stills

The film tells the story of the famous actress Li Yuanyin who became a full-time mother after retiring from divorce. In order to find herself, she was preparing to star in a new action movie directed by her old friend and devoted herself to hard training. During this process, she had to accept the appointment of the investor. With her ex-husband playing the leading role...

From this point of view, this story is really a bit bloody and boring, but Chen Cuimei's filming is very successful. Playing the role of an actress by myself, the tedious experience of raising a baby is a portrayal of personal experience; the process of practicing kung fu shows a physical reshaping and intuitive results visible to the naked eye; The author's ability to control and deconstruct genre films.

Chen Cuimei has achieved a unique perspective that is both fully involved in it and seems to be out of it. She is passionately involved in her own life and leads the audience to watch and experience all this happening calmly.

Chen Cuimei is a writer and curator. Although the label of "Malaysian Film New Wave" is always with her, her film production is not high. At the age of 27, she made a movie "Love Conquers All", which shocked the film industry. Her last feature film "No Summer" "The Year of the Year" goes back to 2010.

"A Year Without Summer" poster

After that, she experienced major life changes such as marriage, childbirth, and divorce. The biggest feeling she felt was "losing herself".

At the beginning of "The Barbarian Invasion", Li Yuanyuan took his son in a hurry on the street, but couldn't go to the public restroom to go to the bathroom with peace of mind. A simple scene directly threw the characters naked into the most real dilemma.

"Barbarian Invasion" stills

In addition to the self-feeling of "becoming a ruin around me, I can't do any creation", the objective evaluation of women in the outside world has also changed accordingly. Others put the identity of "mother" before the individual, raising children and doing everything for it. The sacrifices made are taken for granted.

Obviously she thinks that "mother is just a channel for children to come to the world, similar to some kind of more advanced 3D printer", but this kind of "functionality" makes her encounter that when she is pregnant, strangers on the street can freely Put your hand on her belly. "That's my stomach!" She complained in the film that the reality of all this is like watching a documentary.

Based on the powerlessness of her own real situation, Chen Cuimei used a director's unique method to find her own body and inner driving force. As Li Yuanyuan started to learn kung fu, from being reluctant at the beginning, he gradually found the rhythm by controlling the body, and also found the control over his own life.

The frequency and proportion of being harassed by "barbarians" gradually decreased. Kungfu fist turned itself into a "barbarian", another "barbaric" against social discipline and capital rules, and the "self" gradually gradually become clear.

"Barbarian Invasion" stills

A woman loses her body due to childbirth and regains herself. In the process of truly "using herself as a method" to practice and regain her self, her inner self becomes clearer and stronger. The relationship between body and spirit is a proposition worth pondering, and Chen Cuimei gave a new perspective.

The old monk in the movie said, "I think the body is the cage of the mind, but the mind is the cage of the body." So is the body imprisoning the soul, or is the soul imprisoning the body? When I watched it, I was in a trance for a moment, thinking that if I changed my head, would the current physical body have a wider world?

The body gives many instinctive and intuitive responses, reflecting the ultimate question of "who am I", leaving aside name, occupation, education, region, relatives and various external social relations, how to answer the question of "who am I"? Maybe when the master was beating violently to consummation, while asking "who is hurting", "who is hiding" and "who is being beaten", the person who was so embarrassed that he had nowhere to escape and was accumulating energy to fight back to "save himself" was himself.

Chen Cuimei could have invited Li Xinjie and Yang Yanyan to participate in the performance, especially Yang Yanyan, who has good martial arts skills. Hearing Chen Cuimei talk about it after the screening, I think it is also very suitable, but the kind of learning from scratch The shaping of a person's body texture, muscle lines, and spirit in the eyes can be captured and presented in a movie, and the degree of convincingness and the fit of the theme of the movie itself will obviously be more moving.

"Barbarian Invasion" stills

"Mission: Impossible for Asian Women" is another fun of watching movies. "Inception" is nested with a dreamlike "Great Teleportation of the Universe". With a sudden change of rhythm, Li Yuanyuan leads the audience with his body reshaped Enter a story of escape that can be full of convincing. And the clues buried in the previous words will remind the audience of the occurrence of the "movie". In the bizarre escape and adventure, the male characters added are intertwined with their own hardships in their original lives. What is blurred in the ambiguous boundaries is calm at first glance, but also seems to have blurred tenderness, which remains in the aftertaste. Being old is another kind of freedom.

An easter egg is Li Yuanyuan's English name in the film, Moon Lee, which is the English name of Li Saifeng, an early Hong Kong Kung Fu actress who was amazing at a glance when she was a child.

Li Saifeng played the leading role of Ah Ching in her masterpiece TV series "The Sword of Yue Nv" (1986)

I like this movie, also because of the lightness and ease of "everything is a movie", the kind of scars and powerlessness that are cut open in the movie, and the movie and life are opened in the movie at the same time. The presumptuousness of jokes, shuttling inside and outside the dimensional wall of the genre frame, together with camera scheduling and actor performances, you don't know whether you are watching the work of an author-director or life.

At the end of the film, the director dropped the stick and weapon in his hand on the vast sea, not disarming, but the external gestures are irrelevant, and his gestures and doubts are not over yet. I remember that after the screening that day, Chen Cuimei said that at the end of the filming, "the whiteness is so clean", and there was a burst of applause from the audience.