Textual analysis - Gorgeous

Textual Analysis - Gorgeous

Title – Gorgeous

Release date – 12 February 1999

Director – Vincent Kok

Genre – Martial-Arts, hybrid, comedy and action film

Part one:

The equilibrium in this film is a beautiful young girl from a small Taiwanese fishing village who discovers a romantic message in a bottle. She heads for Hong Kong to find its writer. She, however, meets the wealthy recycling company owner who falls in love with her.

The disruption occurs when the main antagonist (which is the protagonist’s rival businessmen) gets jealous of the protagonists’ business and wants to destroy his business and beat up the protagonists. This begins to create a sense of discomfort for the audience, and is a good disruption for this genre.

The new equilibrium of the film would be that the protagonists beat up the antagonist at the end and rescues the girl and walks off with happy ending. The antagonist is presented as a lowly figure and jealousy person.

In this film, they also have binary oppositions which are hero/villain, love/jealousy, power/weak and wealthy/poor.

The film is in chronological order as it refers to the arrangement of events progressively on the basis of a timeline and it is a linear narrative.

The film is a close narrative because it has happy ending as the protagonists gets back with the girl.

The film is also an omniscient so that the audience can see everything that goes on the movies.

Part 2:

The characters are very diverse and typical for the genre in the film. The antagonists are presented in a rude and jealousy way with a disrespectful tone of speech. An example of this is the antagonists and his friends compared to the protagonists, who still a presented as people in a middle/lower class but the protagonists do not have the same offensive nature that the antagonists do. The way of language as the antagonists use is a very typical of the genre as he uses foul language with disrespectful manners. The choice of costume however is not as diverse as the characters were. This is understandable due to the settings; however it did fit in well.

The setting is based in a city and places where it’s a rough area that combines lower/middle class people. Some of the props include phones, bags, weapons, boxing gloves. This is a very typical choice of props for these genre settings.

Combinations of these props are used at different times and places to create a tense or very calm scene. For example, the weapons were used when the antagonists’ friends were chasing down the protagonists with baseball bats, sticks while wearing masks create a very tense moment for the audience which describes the typical of the genre. Also, the gloves being used for violence during a fight scene which stresses the impact of the offence.

The film introduces gang and jealousy related issues. These are the common problems in the present society and do well to reflect the genre of action. As well as that, the films always have an ending action fight between the antagonists and protagonists at the end which is a very typical genre of action story line.

There is a use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound in the film. Diegetic sound is only used limited to dialogue and non-diegetic sound is used for the background music and attack sound effect. The use of these sound are very typical of the genre as it is made to make it sound realistic and this works very effectively. At the beginning of the film we hear a very calm non diegetic sound to describe the equilibrium at the beginning of the film, and as the disruption occurs, the music changes from calm to being fast pace with drums which describe the tense situation. We also get a diegetic on screen when the mobile phone rings which is a typical prop of the genre.

The film uses variety of different shots and established shot in the film to get the audience know what the areas are like and to get a clear picture in their head of what exactly happening. The film uses close up and extreme close up to the characters face to show their emotions and to give us details of the damage being dealt. They also use match on action and lots of straight cut to make the film look realistic and to keep the flow of the continuity. There are low angle shot and arc shot of the characters tensing up their fists for the audience to see the tense moments in the film. However, the use of slow motion in fight scene works very effectively as it is a typical use of the genre.