Whether it's "Saving Face" or "The Half Of It", which was released 15 years later, there are behind Alice Wu's own personal experience. The personality of the protagonist in the play is carefully crafted by the director. She and herself wrote The roles have a high degree of similarity. In fact, a single-oriented homosexuality is not enough to summarize the themes of these two films. What the director tries to show in the film is the protagonist's exploration process of self-identity, and this period is accompanied by the fetters of emotion, culture, class and so on.
"The Half Of It" is set in an American town dominated by whites. The protagonist Ellie Chu and her father are prominent residents of POC (people of color) in the town. In addition to helping classmates do homework to earn some money to subsidize the family Besides, she spends most of her time alone. It can be said that she has no friends, until one day the school football team athlete Paul entered her life by accident because of a love letter. What Ellie did not expect was , The next story is more than just writing a love letter for $50.
Ellie's original life circle was broken, and there were two more people in her life, one is the enthusiastic and straightforward Paul, and the other is Paul's pursuit of Aster. Aster, who has a nice face, is the person of the school's Big Man, the daughter of the deacon of the church in town. Paul described her as "beautiful, smart, and kind." But the superficially beautiful Aster also has her own troubles. She often doesn't leave the book, she seems to be a bit "incompatible" with the group around her, whether it is the gossip of other girls, her family background of Latin American immigrants, or her religious presence. The small town makes her, like Ellie, struggling to some extent with self-identity, floating on the edge of the main culture.
But an unintentional "love letter writing" accidentally brought these two lonely people in the town together. Ellie said to her literature teacher, "Do you know how it feels to finally meet someone your age and understand you?"-I guess I found the feeling of "the other half". The words found solace for these two lonely souls, and then slowly attracted and approached each other.
The reason why I want to say that "love is more than one form" is because "love" itself contains multiple emotions like an onion. In such a multi-layered aspect, certain emotions are not always so distinct, especially It is that the boundary between friendship and love is not always so clear, and a major focus of the film is the emotional self-exploration of the protagonists in adolescence. In this conservative and backward town, family life also plays a very important role in the life of the protagonists. At this time, the understanding and support of the parents will also contribute to the growth of the protagonists. Whether it is Ellie's reticent but caring father in action and encourages her to chase her dreams, or a cheerful and tolerant mother like Paul, they are the indispensable pillars of the protagonists' lives.
Regarding the interaction between Ellie and Aster, there have been many wonderful analyses of neighbors, and I just want to add a bit of Sartre's existentialism. Sartre's presence in the film is not inferior to religion and God. Sartre is a representative of French existentialism. He believes that existence precedes essence. The essence of human beings is not innate, but depends on the way of life itself. But people do not live under the eyes of others all the time. This kind of evaluation and external definition of the other is a kind of restraint for the self, so Sartre said that "others are hell." This confirms the life experiences of the protagonists in the film. Ellie, who is restrained and introverted and avoids the limelight, is mixed with a group of people with different personalities, and Aster who hides his true hobbies, and Paul, who is carrying his mother to improve the recipe of ancestral sausages, they are all Imprisoned under a certain "standard" set by others, but as the story develops, their lives begin to undergo some positive changes.
Sartre once wrote in "Existentialism is a Humanism", "The real problem is not whether God exists or not; what man needs is to find himself again, and understand that nothing can make him free himself, even a proof The correct evidence of God’s existence will not save him.” What’s interesting is that Aster told Ellie twice in the film that she would like her to find her faith. My understanding is that this belief is not a certain god, but a lifestyle that Ellie is worth to believe in, an essence of Sartre's existentialism. Aster is encouraging Ellie to continue to find her true self in the rest of her life and establish her essence-this is her "belief".
