Girl$
is a film in a genre of drama, which is directed by Kenneth Bi and it adapted almost
a documentary-style to shoot and it is about four girls drawn into compensated
dating in Hong Kong. Director reveals today’s generation what is their attitudes
of love and sex through the four girls from different personalities and backgrounds.
And to explore what the social problems are caused by this
social phenomenon.
The
title of the film “Girl” represents the name of the four
main characters taken from the play as Gucci, Icy, Ronnie and Lin. The alphabetical
order of Girl seems related to the four characters age from young to old and
respectively symbolizes people in the era among 70s, 80s and 90s.
In
the film, the four main characters represent four kinds of people with different purposes to participate in compensated dating. Gucci
is a sixteen-year-old secondary student, a typical person born in late
90s. She loves famous brand very much, therefore, she sells her virgin openly on
the internet and does not hesitate to go into compensated dating for
making more money and to buy a designer bag with a famous brand. And the other
girl Icy is a co-ordinator in compensated dating and she is responsible for
managing business to her friends. Icy is so mad about her boyfriend and she bears
the period pain to go into compensated dating in order to buy a computer to
him. She is typical person going after love.Ronnie is a rich
girl with an empty life, who is the most self-righteous one. She involved into
compensated dating because of loneliness, however, she makes herself look
difference that she put down the money and even more generous than clients
afterwards.
The director
does not deliberately interpreted the invention of Ronnie, but we can see that time has changed as
well as both men and women have the right of equality. As a woman, Ronnie’s behaviour has
been very high profile that breaks the norms in society. Men can visit
a prostitute so can women. The last main character, Lin is from Taiwan, who
goes into compensated dating because she is crazy about the pleasure of sex.
The
girl Gucci engages in compensated dating for getting materials and Icy does
that business for love. We can perceive that “sex” is no longer a precious and
sacred thing in female mind nowadays. The minds of women in today’s
generation, the most important things are love and substance.
Moreover, the male characters in the film all are marginalized and downgraded
such as the police and Gucci’s elder brother, even the fictitious perverted
killer. The most heroic in the whole film is the person called AV expert,
who encourages Gucci not to suicide on chat room and his identity is quite
surprising at the end of the film.
Reference:
Turner, G..(1998). Film narrative. In Film as social practice (2nd ed.). (PP.67-94). London: Routledge.
By Chung Lai Wa, Serena
You have conducted a very brief textual analysis of the selected film, with a little discussion on the subculture of compensated dating. The comparison between different female characters is well-illustratred with relevant examples.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you can quote some specific scenes/dialogues to reflect the changing attitudes of women toward sexual issues, and to explore the sexual/gender politics involved (e.g., re-asserting the sexual pleasure of women?). Another point drawing my interest is what you described as “marginalized men” depicted in the film. What kind of qualities do they possess? What are the implications behind the construction of relatively “weak’ male characters?