I LOVE Yang Ya-Che’s new movie 女朋友-男朋友 (Girlfriend Boyfriend) – started watching it on Jane’s recommendation yesterday and finished it over dinner tonight.
The trailer is reminiscent of something like You Are The Apple of My Eye (那些年我们一起追的女孩）but the rom-com, campy vibe that it gave off is something that is definitely just skimming the surface of the film, and the fact that the film is so entangled with these deeper themes of the socio-political backdrop of that historical period as well as the characters’ relationships and personalities just really, really speaks to me. I remembered watching Blue Gate Crossing, the way it marked out a period of adolescence and illustrated that period as not only carefree, blissful and nostalgic but also a period that is equally scarred with pain, loss and loneliness – and what both of these films, Blue Gate Crossing and Girlfriend Boyfriend seem to be able to do so well is to understand that youth and the whole process growing up and is one that does not flatly speak of pure happiness or pure sadness, and that these concepts of happiness and sadness are inextricably entwined, thus the intensity and enormity of the pain that comes along with trying to articulate these emotions, and also the deep passion of that process.
And looking back from having watched Blue Gate Crossing a few years back, and being older and somewhat wiser (but not quite) it’s kind of like you can look back and reconcile certain elements of yourself that you see in the film – always very fascinated by humans and people , how everyone is born into this world with the same intensity of yearning and longing , but how over the years and due to the state of existing and functioning in society we tend to repress what is the most organic, the most real and the most vulnerable inside us. In this strange way then, everything just leads back to this whole concept of love doesn’t it? We all want to be liberated in some way from so many things that tie us down in life – Girlfriend Boyfriend captures this fleeting sense of liberation and magnifies all these small moments of illumination. Very beautifully powerful and kind of reinvigorates your soul in a very touching kind of way.
Right now at this moment I just feel – I know I really, really want to create something. I really really want to externalise all these thoughts and feelings floating around in my mind, structure it and organise it and make some meaning out of my own existence and position in the world. Looking back at the years ; it’s kind of like you’ve always innately felt something about yourself, that you might have even the slightest glimmer of a capacity to one day arrive in a place that you’ve once thought was beyond your wildest dreams – and then the years wax and wane and shape you, slowly and slowly, and before you know it you look back and you realise that somehow along the way you might have managed to blindly feel your way towards a path that is right for you. I’m hopeful for the future – not any kind of economic or pragmatic sort of future – but a future that is sifting inside my soul, reaching out.
So I got back a paper today and it’s a really affirming feeling when somebody tells you that the work that you’re doing in your brain is beautiful. I’m thankful to be here yet again, being to explore subjects and topics that would have been otherwise, and understand exactly what kind of events, ideas and situations that I can actually thrive in and live on .
And also the biggest happiest thing today is imagining that perhaps two years down the road we might actually be able to exist in our own little space together, being able to function in a life that we have dreamed of together in a place that is away from external obligations – I’m keeping my fingers crossed ; for the past few weeks since I had browsed through the possibilities and weighing pros and cons in my mind I had been debating ; but now the future that you’ve proposed is bright sparkling shimmering gorgeous and I know that I would definitely stay with you, if I could (:
Very meaningful day today (: Am also being decently productive on the papers that are due for next Friday – I shall draft both of them out today and aim to write at least one (and a half?? :D) before the weekend concludes itself. And everything will be good, and in it’s proper place again.
Kismet and Karma 