In the social wave of high vigilance and opposition to the "love brain", a movie that is so imaginary that it seems to be back in the Middle Ages, and is simply trying to prove that "true love exists", in today's cinemas, it is a breath of fresh air, and it is still a joke. ?

"The Story of Three Nobles" is such a movie. This is a rare type in Chinese movies. Fantasy love is not without it, but such a pure, clean and original fairy tale with a bit of evil temperament still makes people fascinated. A unique viewing experience. If movies are dream machines, then this is probably the closest thing to a dream in the cinema right now.

Poster of "Three Noble Love Stories"

The bored gods looked at the human world in jest and made casual bets to prove whether there is true love in the world. The method of argument is to put a curse on a little boy so that anything he kisses will immediately fall into a deep sleep. Only with true love can this curse be broken.

This gender- and function-reversed version of the "Sleeping Beauty" curse fell on Wang Sangui, a boy with an earthy name, a breast, a coward, and a brave man.

On the journey of trying to break the curse, Sangui met three women, Yuyu who dreamed of being a princess, Xu Yuexia, a down-and-out singer who disguised herself as a witch, and Tingting, who was as straightforward and cheerful as a knight. Although "The Love Story of Three Nobles" revolves around the three nobles, they are more like a clue that connects the various pearls and jade that help him break the curse.

Stills of "The Love Story of Three Nobles"

In this debut film by a female director, the true love fairy tale is not the traditional old-fashioned prince and princess, princess and knight. Each of the three women has their own dreams, bringing with them the beauty and persistence of different aspects of women. What’s interesting is that the male protagonist becomes the one who needs to be saved. Different female characters protect, help or use him in different ways. True love is like a lofty ideal. In this modern version of the perspective, there is retro simplicity, There is also room for many contemporary interpretations. What's interesting is that when I think back to Sangui's delay in taking the step to find true love, the reason given is still the familiar phrase "I'm not ready yet."

Stills of "The Love Story of Three Nobles"

Yuyu longs for love, and after meeting Sangui, she bravely steps forward to help him break the curse. But what this girl did was actually "falling in love". It didn't matter whether it was Sangui or someone else. She thought Sangui was her prince, and her real desire in her heart was to hope that she could become a prince when she met him. A real princess. After all the fuss, there is no difference between one person and another. The "love" she gives is to let others satisfy her fantasy of love.

Stills of "The Love Story of Three Nobles"

Xu Yuexia's setting is so cute, a little bad, but also inexplicably a little healing. A woman who had suffered from insomnia for twelve years, with a hoarse voice and a haggard appearance, looked like an old witch. She heard that Sangui had a hypnotic effect with a kiss, so she tricked Sangui into kissing her to sleep every day. Sangui was angry at the deception at first, but in the process he also discovered that his bug could help many people in need. So people who couldn't sleep lined up in front of his door. He showed magic again and again, and the kiss became a sleeping pill, and he accepted himself more.

Yao Chen said "regret can also become a curse" in a decadent and beautiful way, revealing the second woman's life situation. She is a strong woman who once missed love for her career. She is self-centered, greedy, and full of vitality and desire. After becoming successful and famous, he loses his lover, cannot reconcile with his regrets, falls into the dark abyss of self-punishment, and closes himself in his own castle.

Stills of "The Love Story of Three Nobles"

Tingting is the most fairy tale part of this story. The heroine of the story is not a weak princess waiting to be saved, but a very sassy knight. When she was a child, she faced Sangui's trick of selling out "I am a child without a mother", but she calmly told him "I don't have a mother either, but we can't feel sorry for ourselves"; before they separated, she and Sangui Gui made a promise to meet again in the sunset in the future. In order to let Sangui remember her, she was the one who took the initiative to kiss her face. After moving, she discovered the big secret of the family. She left decisively and used her own way to help those who really needed help. ...Of course, in the setting of the plot, the important thing is that she will not fall asleep if Sangui kisses her.

In this love story, the reason for falling in love is not shown. Therefore, "love" exists in a classical form, which seems to be unreasonable, but also matches with the naked eye in the unique growth paths of two people. The boy who can climb the pipe to water the plants on other people's balconies, and the girl who can use the sewer to reflect the sunset to give people hope, should be a match made in heaven.

Stills of "The Love Story of Three Nobles"

The story is full of twists and turns, and the emotions are sincere and cute. If you look closely, you can find out many of the director's little fun and unique ideas, and follow the plot, it will be a fantasy time. The movie creates a completely imaginary world, where boys and girls do not have the pressure of going to school, homework, or working, and are just busy breaking the curse and finding true love. However, this sense of overhead is not inconsistent with the entire movie viewing process. This is closely related to the creator's ability to create time and space. The director has a unique and self-contained aesthetic. In the film, from the modeling of the characters to the design of the story scenes and the use of light and color, there is a weird and gorgeous coordination.

Realizing the creativity that is visible to the naked eye, and thinking that this film was born out of the Green Green Project of the Directors Guild, and that it was a project that won the title of the Golden Rooster Venture Capital Unit a few years ago, I felt that maybe I could look at this film from one dimension, a kind of industry perspective on The expectations of young directors. When most young creators focus their first debuts on the expression or discussion of personal experience or private emotions, Liu Siyi's brave attempt to break away from conventional literary films and bring a distinctive personal style to the genre can be regarded as a kind of " authorship”.

The strong stylization actually reminds people of Tim Burton while watching the movie. This strange association makes people suddenly realize that liking the works of this strange director is also a more adolescent thing in the impression. After becoming more mature "social animals", we care about realism, look for deeper issues, and try to understand the truth of the world in a more down-to-earth resonance. As the saying goes, "I'm past the age of believing in fairy tales," that's probably why this movie seems a bit out of date now.

Stills of "The Love Story of Three Nobles"

After three days of release, the box office was less than 4 million yuan, which is really a pity for this movie. The originality and freshness of the story of "The Story of Three Nobles", the well-made completion of the work, and the pleasant sensory experience it brings to people are all considered to be superior in the category of domestic love movies. And although the romance film category is not a popular genre that sells well at the box office, it is still a necessity in the special social occasion of the cinema. Let's take a look at those "one-day tours with limited schedules" for Valentine's Day, Chinese Valentine's Day, and New Year's Eve. Under the banner of being exclusively for couples, on specific days, there is no shortage of bad movies with long titles that have failed ratings and are full of routines. audience. There are also some literary and artistic films with more complex emotions that take advantage of the holiday heat to play on the sidelines of love. In the end, the audience is embarrassed and angry because of the "wrong version". There is no need to expect that people in this era will have any naive illusions about love. Let some couples who need to witness a beautiful love as a ritual in the cinema at a certain time to experience such a beautiful fairy tale time, no less than in years. Is it fun to repeat the "youth that can never be returned" routine year after year?

The film leaves a line at the end, "In the end, this story about true love will be passed down forever..."

The movie uses the first half of Sangui's life to break the curse and prove the existence of true love; but the director also sincerely and cruelly proves the existence of true love, making this love fleeting and unable to last forever. Therefore, this fairy tale is very retro and very modern.

Warm, optimistic, powerful and sober, this is probably the reason why people who are past the age of blind date fairy tales will still like this movie.