Stills from Qin Lan’s Mother Tongue
At the end of 2011, a social news story "A pair of wealthy businessmen named L in Panyu District of Guangzhou were infertile after a long marriage, and then they successfully gave birth to octuplets with the help of IVF technology and surrogacy" spread like wildfire, causing a heated discussion among netizens about the phenomenon of surrogacy. A few days ago, a movie "Mother Tongue" with the theme of surrogacy, written by Wang Haiping and directed by Yu Zhong, starring Qin Lan, Fang Zhongxin and Pei Wang, was shown in major cinemas, which once again triggered public discussion on the topic of surrogacy. In the film, Qin Lan, the leading actress, boldly broke through the previous image. For the first time, she appeared as a female college student who was forced to "surrogate" because of the pressure of survival. In the play, she not only deeply deciphered the little-known mental journey behind the group of "surrogate mothers" for the audience, but also was exposed that "she gained more than 10 kilograms of weight for the role during filming". After the film was released, Qin Lan’s acting skills were unanimously recognized by the audience and film critics, and she was even praised as "the actress who can kill the audience with her eyes".
Qin Lan sacrificed "skin deep thinking" for Mother Tongue and conquered the audience by acting.
Mother tongue is a serious work that touches human existence. It tells the story that Zhang Qing (Fang Zhongxin) and Fang Yun (Pei Wang), a well-off couple, find a female college student Li Yan (Qin Lan) as a surrogate. In the film, the husband and wife have a successful career and their own family conditions are quite superior. They are typical middle-class families, and the only fly in the ointment is that they have no children for many years. Li Yan was forced by life to become a surrogate mother, so she was involved in an uncontrollable emotional whirlpool. During her pregnancy, she gradually realized the feelings of being a mother and became increasingly attached to the fetus. As a reporter, Fang Yun participated in the coverage of the disaster area during the Wenchuan earthquake, felt great maternal love and adopted an orphan. There is a complicated emotional entanglement between the three male and female protagonists in the film.
In Mother Tongue, Li Yan, the surrogate mother played by Qin Lan, has gone through the whole process of giving birth and having children, so her main scenes are concentrated on pregnant women and getting along with children, which is undoubtedly a big challenge for Qin Lan who has no experience in "raising children". In order to play pregnant women and mothers well, Qin Lan first made a breakthrough in her image — — She not only appeared in the whole process with a plain face, but also gained 10 pounds and put on a silicone belly specially tailored by the crew in order to be closer to the role of "surrogate mother". In addition, a month before the movie started, Qin Lan "lurked" into a pregnant woman prenatal education class in Beijing every weekend with the "pregnant woman" in the movie, carefully observed the behaviors and actions of expectant mothers, learned the basic common sense that pregnant women should pay attention to, imitated it when they got home, and then practiced it over and over again, striving to make every word and deed vivid.
"I don’t have many lines in this role, but more of a grasp of the inner play and the state when I get along with the male host and children. What the director wants is not strong expression, but subtle psychological changes, all of which are reflected in every detail. Although I experienced the pain of gaining weight and psychological torture during the filming, as long as I can vividly show this role to the audience, I will never regret it as an actor! " Qin Lan said. Qin Lan’s brave breakthrough in the performance of Mother Tongue not only won the "Most Potential Actor" award at the British (London) Vientiane Film Festival, but also won unanimous recognition from the audience for Qin Lan’s acting skills after the film was released in China, and was praised as "the actress who can kill the audience with her eyes".
Mother tongue inherits great love. Qin Lan calls on the whole society to pay attention to surrogate mothers.
"The baby under your body has the care of a mother and warm swaddling clothes", which is a sentence written by Wang Haiping, a poet, writer and screenwriter and chief producer of the film Mother Tongue after the Wenchuan earthquake. Before the release of Mother Tongue, Wang Haiping mentioned this poem many times in an interview. Because in his view, Mother Tongue shows the great love of Chinese women — — "Surrogacy" and "adoption" of orphans after natural and man-made disasters are the themes of this film. It turns out that the novel Mother Tongue was written after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, when Wang Haiping was working in Huairou District. In order to complete this work, Wang Haiping made an interview in Dalian and other places for about half a year according to the experience of people around him, collected a lot of information and got a lot of details. Because the plot and details of Mother Tongue can be found in prototype, this is why Wang Haiping can write "surrogate mother" so vividly.
After the film Mother Tongue was released, "Surrogacy" immediately became a hot topic in Weibo and public discussion, and the debate about maternal love between "genetic mother" and "surrogate mother" was even more rampant. Some viewers commented, "Mother Tongue is a quiet movie. Surrogate mothers are as light as water on the surface, but maternal love thicker than blood is in beautiful scenes. Although I feel calm after watching it, moral, legal and human topics will make people think." Some viewers questioned, "What is parenting? What is Guan Ai? What is blood relationship? What is light in life? What is heavy? What can cut the gordian knot? What is broken is still connected. " Some insiders even said, "Qin Lan’s plain appearance in Mother Tongue is natural and true, and a few lines will bring out a traditional mother who cares about her family, is filial, virtuous, warm, and even has a somewhat outdated concept, so we can’t help but sigh that maternal love must be beyond the existence of money."
In fact, in Mother Tongue, Li Yan, played by Qin Lan, started out as a "surrogate mother" because of money. "This role is a girl drifting north. Because of something happened at home and her life in Beijing was very tight, she chose a surrogate career with quick money by chance." Qin Lan said frankly that Mother Tongue is not a curiosity-seeking movie with the topic of "surrogacy", but the human concern revealed in the work is the theme of the whole film. "From October of conception to the last birth of the child, whether you are a surrogate mother or not, it is the process from a girl to a woman. Moreover, the feelings between the couple of this middle-class family who accepted surrogacy in the film have also changed through these ten months. " In addition, Qin Lan appealed, "I hope more people in the society can pay attention to this film ‘ Surrogacy ’ Behavior, concern ‘ Surrogacy ’ Mother. Because it is illegal ‘ Surrogacy ’ Surgery is extremely unsafe, and it is likely to give ‘ Surrogacy ’ The acquired growth of mothers and children has caused great harm, which is not just psychological! "