A popular influencer with three million followers named Haotong Shouwan also joined the fray.
You've done a thousand and one wrong things, but love itself is not wrong. You've told a thousand and one lies, but love doesn't lie.
The director is too cunning, constantly imbuing the character of Zhao Lele with charm through love. The actress is too cunning, constantly enhancing the character with her acting skills. Originally a self-centered, stupid, and brainless idiot, she was transformed into a ghost that is both lovable and hateful, and hard to let go of.
Yang Huanyi's gaze towards Ye Chu was incredibly complex. Love, hate, repression, jealousy, helplessness, indulgence, gratitude. Ye Chu's gaze towards Yang Huanyi was utterly innocent. Love, longing, fervor. No one could resist falling in love with Ye Chu after the scene of her patricide (how could you patricide again?). But I think Lin Fengyu fell in love with her even earlier. Perhaps he had already fallen for her when he first ran from the back building to the front building and saw Zhao Lele standing in the sunlight.
I cried a lot after watching the movie. Love is useless, yet love persists despite its futility. I completely understood Lin Fengyu's feeling of being powerless when he fell in love with Zhao Lele; I felt so pathetic and helpless.
Blue, a film critic with hundreds of thousands of followers known for reviewing art films, commented:
【The Forest Without Flowers has a rare merit: it portrays the process of Lin Fengyu and Zhao Lele falling in love with great delicacy, and it is logical and emotionally coherent.
Lin Fengyu wanted to escape Zhao Cheng, so he could only start with Zhao Lele, inevitably harboring complex emotions such as guilt, gratitude, and hatred. Only by acting in accordance with Zhao Lele's wishes could Lin Fengyu maintain Zhao Lele's infatuation with him. A person harboring complex emotions, constantly studying and analyzing another, is prone to falling in love. Of course, this can also be explained by Stockholm syndrome: Lin Fengyu was forced to please Zhao Lele, and his brain, in order to reduce the pain, forcibly distorted his perception, making Lin Fengyu believe he had fallen in love with her.
Zhao Lele was a lesbian by nature and found the eligible boys her father introduced her to disgusting. However, the maids and women in the back quarters were too "lowly" to her, and while the other noblewomen were her equals, they wouldn't accommodate her spoiled personality and would only provoke her disgust. Only her sworn sister, Lin Fengyu, was outwardly her equal while subtly making her feel comfortable. Under these circumstances, falling in love with Lin Fengyu was a natural progression.
Many people with stereotypes about homosexuals believe that lesbians' eyes light up at the sight of any woman, and they instantly fall in love or are unable to be with the one they love. This stereotype even extends to movies, where two women are placed in a repressive environment, and then a man oppresses them; without any further development, the two women automatically fall in love.
"The Forest Without Flowers" impressed me with its respect. The director meticulously depicted the gradual development of the relationship, leaving no detail overlooked. The actors also portrayed this progression, with Ye Chu's gaze shifting from indifference to apprehension, then to curiosity, attachment, and finally infatuation; her physical movements also became increasingly unrestrained. Whether it was spiritual love, physical desire, or the growth and destruction of love, everything was carefully captured on film.
Zhao Lele's personality may be flawed, but her love life is no less flawed than that of heterosexuals or homosexuals. This girl is very lucky. I gave it a 10/10 not because the film is perfect—in fact, I really dislike Zhao Lele—but simply out of respect for the director. My rating: ★★★★★
@IMM-Light and Shadow Burner: [My rating: ★☆☆☆☆, Ye Chu, you should reimburse me for my plane ticket! She started throwing a tantrum in the first ten minutes and continued until the last. A complete madwoman! It's unbelievable that the protagonist didn't grow at all in two hours. If this were a serious drama, the audience would have killed her long ago. My head was throbbing when I left the theater, my mind filled with images of Ye Chu screaming and biting people. This movie could be renamed "Lele's Murderous Forest"!]
@ChocolateFilmScreeningCenter: [The visuals switch between rough and refined, the fishing village life is like a landscape painting, and the director has a strange penchant for filming women's hands. The scenes of the self-combing women rebelling have a kind of primal wildness, but the life in the Zhao mansion is too meticulously crafted, resulting in a disjointed feel between the scenes, as if they are not scenes from a single film.]
The pacing of the plot is unbalanced, with too much time spent depicting the relationship between the two main characters. And then everyone dies too quickly at the end. Overall, it's a very painful film, devoid of any hope or satisfaction. I'm giving it three stars only because of the actors' performances. My rating: ★★★☆☆
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