Just before the first day of the Lunar New Year, many viewers thought that the promotion of Jia Ling's "Hot and Hot" was a gamble, after all, the gimmick of "losing 100 pounds" was too eye-catching.
But when the last third of the movie progresses, Jia Ling's appearance slowly changes with practice, and the audience in the cinema can only express their shock with the most direct foul language.
Jia Ling, for a movie, really lost weight like a lightning. fulfilled his promise in "Hello, Li Huanying".
At the time, everyone thought it was just Jia Ling's joke.
It has nothing to do with boxing.
Hot and Hot is based on the Japanese film "100 Yuan Love", which was released in 2014 and even changed the career of the heroine Sakura Ando.
Like "100 Yuan Love", Jia Ling's Du Leying is an abandoned house woman, who uses boxing to regain her dignity after being hit by multiple crits of family, friendship, and love.
In the first half of "Hot and Hot", there is almost no one around Du Leying who can be called "normal".
Parents who don't make money doing business, sisters who cheat on their marriages and divorce with babies, girlfriends who cheat on their boyfriends, cousins who calculate themselves, shop owners who don't have clean hands and feet, and gym managers who only want customers to get cards.
Even his own Bai Yueguang, the actor Haokun (played by Lei Jiayin), who only wants to box, will sell his so-called ideals for 30,000 yuan of black money.
Compared with these "abnormal" people, Du Leying is obese and unemployed, and only eats, sleeps, sleeps and eats every day, except for the fat hanging on his body, only a penny of worthless kindness remains. This makes Du Leying look like the most "abnormal" one, and she smells of giving up.
So she chose boxing, and through boxing, she lost weight, and through boxing, she stood in the ring that she could never have imagined.
Although she still failed to defeat the professional player in the game, she defeated her former self, "Hot and Hot" is a story about self-redemption, in this story, although "boxing" is a carrier, more of a symbol.
First of all, as a sport, boxing is an individual sport, compared with other basketball and football that have been presented a lot in movies and television, boxing pays more attention to individual play, rather than collective cooperation.
Secondly, compared with individual sports such as table tennis or marathon, boxing, which is a fist to the flesh and an almost animalistic sense of blow, can also present more "redemption", "release" and "liberation".
Although there have been world-class gold absorbers such as Tyson and Pacquiao in history, the impression of boxing in most people's minds is still that they are sweating shirtless, red and swollen at the corners of their eyes, bleeding from the nose and mouth.
When the story of boxing is given to an Asian woman, its own color is strengthened, as is the case with Sakura Ando, and even more so with Jia Ling.
The actors themselves bring more sense of fate and contrast to the film, and I have to say that compared with many young directors who love remakes, Jia Ling is indeed smart enough.
Jia Ling as Du Leying Figure "Hot and Hot" official Weibo.
Women understand women better?
Female frequency movies", this word was often associated with love brains before. Those works that used to be gimmicks of small fresh meat traffic stars are often considered to exist to harvest female audiences, and they are more of a hormonal card. Judging by the feedback from moviegoers, this type of film is not very vigorous, and it is difficult to achieve real success at the box office.
In the past "female frequency movies", the female characters portrayed by the actors were often only biological women, but their behavior was often to look at themselves from a male perspective, resulting in the final love brain-style logic that could not really impress female audiences.
Jia Ling has adopted a different approach from "Hello, Li Huanying" to "Hot and Hot" this time, she never flaunts the identity of a woman, but from beginning to end she is doing what women are really doing and saying what they really say.
Especially the sentence I was asked in the easter egg what to do after losing weight. Jia Ling's answer in the film is: "Wear an evening dress and make a big wave." The joys and sorrows she presents are natural.
Although the background color of "100 Yuan Love" is harsh realism, Jia Ling substitutes her own anxiety and predicament into it, and her sincere state and realistic dilemma are obviously more lethal to female audiences than the previous pseudo-female frequency works.
The audience popularity accumulated by comedians over the years is another wealth that Jia Ling has saved. The high degree of sketches and variety shows has made Jia Ling a familiar face, just when people thought that she would go all the way on the road of "variety show", Jia Ling withdrew and plunged into the film industry that did not belong to her, which also made many people see her ambition and determination.
Although Jia Ling has never flaunted her identity as a female creator, in the eyes of many viewers, she has now become a perfect interpreter of the female perspective.
From this point of view, Jia Ling seems to have narrowed her path, but it does not necessarily fail at the box office. Judging from the box office on the first day of release, "Hot and Hot" has a good chance to compete for the Spring Festival box office champion. As for whether the box office myth of "Hello, Li Huanying" can be reproduced, it is not yet known.
The method of publicity cannot be replicated.
The way "Hot and Hot" is announced this time is indeed quite risky. Since the preparation of the movie, Jia Ling has never appeared in front of the public. Previously, when the movie was announced, the film team directly threw out Jia Ling's weight loss of 100 pounds. Facts have proved that "losing 100 pounds" has really whetted the audience's appetite.
But even Jia Ling can't use this kind of publicity method a second time, after all, after burning 100 catties of herself, Jia Ling has no 100 catties of meat to burn anymore.
Hot and Hot" poster Figure "Hot and Hot" official Weibo.
At the same time, the timing of the revelations was chosen to be quite particular - it was early, and the fire was extinguished before the release of the project; If it is late, it may lose the battle of the competitor's announcement. How to cooperate online and offline, and how to resolve the potential crisis of public opinion, these are all gambling.
In fact, before the movie was released, the announcement of "Hot and Hot" almost overturned. The audience's rebellious mood continues to rise, and some of the clips that were advanced in the short ** have also been repeatedly interpreted and questioned, Zhang Xiaofei's makeup and Lei Jiayin's appearance have become the points of the audience's complaints.
Fortunately, after the movie was released, Jia Ling's performance was able to withstand the thunder buried by the publicity. After all, "Hello, Li Huanying" is her own story, and "Hot and Hot" has acted her life into a movie, such a creative mode is still huge and dangerous for herself.
Because no good film creator has ever proved that a lifetime of creation is always consuming itself, after all, film is an art of making dreams, and since it is a dream, the protagonist in the dream cannot always be himself.
Before the release of "Hot and Hot", singer Da Zhang Wei wrote a high-profile song for the movie, but in fact, in terms of effect, it is still not as good as the late singer Zhao Yingjun's "Send You a Little Red Flower".
When Du Leying, played by Jia Ling, collapsed in the ring, the singing of "Send You a Little Red Flower" sounded, and when Zhao Yingjun's warm voice reappeared in the 2024 movie, it was inevitable that people would be reminded of Zhao Yingjun's farewell back then: "Death is not terrible, forgetting is." ”
Jia Ling is now one of the directors with the best market benefits, and she still hasn't forgotten Zhao Yingjun, although Zhao Yingjun can't see how she has lost weight. The audience understood what Jia Ling meant, and all those who worked hard with the power of their lives would not be forgotten.
never forgets the way she came, which may also be an important reason for Jia Ling's success.
Author: Ji An Bing.