Before the release of the movie “Myth of Love”, director Shao Yihui had no expectations for the box office. She knew it was a very niche film, and everyone in the company knew it. From the very beginning, the participants did not associate the film with the so-called “explosive money”. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t choose to let all the characters speak Shanghainese,” Shao Yihui said.
The story is not complicated. Old Bai, played by Xu Zheng, is an uncle from Shanghai, a painter, warm-hearted, and very good at cooking. When he reaches middle age, he has different emotional involvements with three women. As soon as the film was released, the Douban score reached 8.3, and topics such as the Shanghai landscape, middle-aged love, and gender awareness involved in the film sparked heated discussions. Many people think that the film presents a real city of Shanghai – all the men, women and children, the coffee culture and the little bourgeois vibe. Of course, there are also people who think that there are no outsiders or the suffering of Shanghai drifters. It is not the real Shanghai, but has been “purified”. Shao Yihui saw similar critical views and communicated with the writer. She was very happy to have such a sincere exchange and used it to sort out herself.
She never thought to shoot a comprehensive, real, real Shanghai, and she felt that no one might even do it. The actors in the film are all from Shanghai and speak Shanghai dialect, completely from the point of view of performance. “Once there is a foreigner, he will speak Mandarin, and everyone will speak Mandarin. Shanghai people have this quality, and they will not be in front of a foreigner. If you don’t understand me speaking Shanghainese, I have to say it. It’s rude, they’re not like that.”
Lao Bai has a prototype, but the “white hard work” in the writing process has little to do with the prototype. He borrowed from his profession and some shadows, and the stories are fictional. On the contrary, the three female characters and the little cobbler are Shao Yihui’s ideal characters. There are many people who say that there is a Gloria around them. Shao Yihui thinks that this is a manifestation of universality, and it is good that different audiences can see the shadow of their own life.
Movies are a very limiting thing, “I just wanted to write a very simple, small love story, and it ended up being like this. So don’t try to see everything in one movie, that’s why we need all kinds of movies. .”
Shao Yihui, who is only 30 years old, has achieved such a reputation for his first feature film. It seems that everything is smooth and lucky. After talking, it is not difficult to find the reason for this luck. From the beginning of the script, she wrote it according to the shooting, and she thought clearly regarding how to shoot every scene, so there was basically no waste scene in the script, everything that was written might be filmed, and what was filmed might be cut into it; even where to go. Shooting, what props to use, and how to shoot, she already had the corresponding picture in her mind.
In 2020, “Myth of Love” gained initial attention in the first film market. In fact, Shao Yihui also voted for Pingyao Film Festival and Shanghai Film Festival before that, but there was no news. Later, Chen Lizhi, the founder of Matt Pictures, saw the script and hired Xu Zheng as a producer. At first, Xu Zheng didn’t want to play Lao Bai, but in the end he found that he was the only one who was the most suitable, and Ma Yili was the judge at that time, so he finally decided on the current cast.Looking back on this process, Shao Yihui feels that for a young director like himself, it is impossible to have any resources or connections.
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