Renewal of the Formula: Melodrama of the End of the Century

Grażyna Stachówna

Abstract

The text is an extract from Grażyna Stachówna’s book Niedole miłowania. Ideologia i perswazja w melodramatach filmowych [The Misery of Loving: Ideology and Persuasion in Film Melodramas] (Rabid, Kraków 2001). Stachówna makes an attempt to describe the situation of the most classic film genre, i.e. today’s melodrama. Old cinematic genres have been mixed and blurred but the narration structures of the „film about love” have turned out to be extraordinarily solid. However, it has not escaped a new trend, which has recently been strongly marked in the cinema. What Stachówna means is a special play the audience is involved in. This play, based on repetitions and surprise, embraces feature film and formal patterns and genre conventions. Major structures of the model itself have generally remained intact. Stachówna studies the trends in Hana-Bi by Takeshi Kitano. The film is termed a hybrid of police film and melodrama, an extremely different genre. The main hero is a tough policeman who learns that his beloved wife is terminally ill. His bloody actions are a peculiar proof of his love. Their last trip is tender, harmonious and melancholic. Violence and terror the life of samurai’s descendant is marked with are now out of place. The death he consciously chooses for himself and his wife has a liberating power and brings redemption. The European public „assimilate” this ambiguous and mysterious multi-genre film containing rich symbols from Japan’s culture through a universal formula of melodrama. The other film analysed here is Julio Medem’s Les amantes des Circulo Polar in which the film director employs a special trick. Genre attributes are congested and exaggerated to such an extent that the audience is becoming fascinated not by the story itself but by the way it is told. The heroes give in to Fate, are pawns in the wheel of fortune. The film is divided into two parts. Each of the lovers tells an own version of the events. Every element appearing in the film (a plane, a bus and Lapland); each character has an own function to perform, and gradually uncovered meanings. Medem’s story is complicated and full of references to other texts. Everything becomes conventional. The heroes lose in life but their love is immortal.