After "Concubine Hua", who is Jiang Xin?

　　Gao Kai

　　When it comes to actors, one cannot ignore the screen or screen image they create.

For Jiang Xin, "Concubine Hua" must be avoided.

This is an important image mark that her actor identity can really be highlighted by the public.

Many commentators and audiences will praise Jiang Xin's Concubine Hua, saying "After Jiang Xin, there will be no Concubine Hua", and looking at this sentence again, one of the questions I'm thinking about is "After Concubine Hua, who is Jiang Xin?"

　　It is true that although she debuted as a child star, she has always insisted on filming, and even played the role of Mu Wanqing in "Tian Long Ba Bu", but before "Hua Fei", "Jiang Xin" has never been significantly popular in the entertainment circle.

Until she starred in "Concubine Hua", Jiang Xin finally attracted the attention of the public with her solid acting skills.

　　The outside world is looking forward to what kind of film and television image Jiang Xin will "get out of the circle" after "The Legend of Zhen Huan". The young, beautiful, energetic, sinister and vicious mistress in "Jade", and the disgraced "scheming girl" in "Old Peasant" are not the answers expected by the outside world, and are even disappointing.

In addition to consolidating word-of-mouth and popularity, examining the appearance of such dramas will probably damage the audience satisfaction and loyalty that has been accumulated so hard.

This is really a dangerous challenge for an actor who has been in the circle for so long and has just gained recognition from the audience with a good role.

From this, I can't help but wonder, Jiang Xin, "After Concubine Hua", should have relatively advantageous resources on hand, why doesn't she choose to play well?

　　After watching a lot of Jiang Xin's interviews, the most impressive thing is that she always said "try it".

When she was a child, the art troupe recruited students. In fact, Jiang Xin didn't know anything, but she wanted to go, and it was because of the phrase "Why can't I try?" in her mind that she really let her try.

As a result, in the process of queuing, I was asked by the TV station staff, "Do you want to act?"

Naturally, she didn't know how to act yet, but she still went to "try it out". As a result, she participated in the TV sketch "Who's Wrong" and won the second prize in the national competition that year.

At the age of sixteen, Jiang Xin wanted to go to Beijing and become a drifter. Her parents asked her if she was sure. She said, "I want to give it a try." But she failed in the drama exam, and she never took the exam again.

"The Legend of Zhen Huan" cast, Jiang Xin's original role was not Concubine Hua, because director Zheng Xiaolong felt that Jiang Xin was more suitable for a dignified and quiet role. After reading the script, Jiang Xin was moved by Concubine Hua and took the initiative to ask for an audition. Director Zheng Xiaolong said that this was not suitable for her. She said, "How can you know it is not suitable without trying it", so she "trialed" the role of Concubine Hua.

　　Of course, until the appearance of "Fan Shengmei" in "Ode to Joy", we once again saw Jiang Xin's highlight as an actor.

Fan Shengmei can be said to be Jiang Xin's second most important screen image after Concubine Hua. The reason is that she was born in Urumqi, Xinjiang, and later went to Beijing to work hard and break into the entertainment industry. There are more footnotes of "seeking dreams", It fits or echoes with Fan Shengmei, who has worked hard from a remote town to Shanghai.

　　From the fresh, charming and slightly playful Mu Wanqing, to the hateful, pitiful, but not lacking concubine Hua, to the kind-hearted, uneasy and vain Fan Shengmei, Jiang Xin made every screen image full of flesh and blood. The three characters also seem to have become several key nodes in the outside world to define Jiang Xin's actor stage.

After "Fan Shengmei", Jiang Xin's other almost representative role is "Tian Yulan" in "Little Shede", but it is also in this character that we see some of her limitations.

　　Compared with actresses such as Sun Li and Yao Chen, Jiang Xin seems to be a little "unplayable".

She shines brightly when she plays a supporting role, but she always lacks some bright spots when she is the heroine, which is related to a certain degree of stereotype and trace in her performance.

Especially in fashion dramas, Jiang Xin's presentation is often too "acting", holding a pair of airs, holding a tone, posing a kind of expression, riveting into the role, but such a performance may It brings a "sense of strangeness" and "isolation" to the audience in front of the screen, and sometimes loses some "real" charm.

Therefore, we can find that Jiang Xin in "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is loved by the audience because of "very drama", and in later fashion or reality dramas, it is also unable to mobilize the audience's emotions because of "very drama".

In "Little Shede", you can clearly feel the difference between Jiang Xin and Song Jia's performance: Song Jia's performance is more traceless, so it is less deliberate and more natural.

　　The same situation also appeared in "Shen Jilan's Proposal" in her latest work "Honours".

The first thing to admit is that this performance is a breakthrough for Jiang Xin herself, although it is not the first time that she has played a rural woman.

Shen Jilan is a real national model worker and a recipient of the "Medal of the Republic".

Jiang Xin not only restored Shen Jilan's life experience, but also tried to restore the appearance of women in rural China in the last century.

Those so-called "strong" or "fat" words about Jiang Xin's body comments have become a plus for her character interpretation.

It is reported that Shen Jilan took root in rural land and never left the countryside. She has been working for a long time and is tall and strong.

Director Lin Nan first thought of Jiang Xin when he was shooting, because the director felt that a girl with a bit of flesh on her face would smile particularly brightly and brightly, and even that kind of smile could dispel all the hardships in life.

From Jiang Xin's appearance as a peasant woman and speaking a Shanxi dialect, it can be found that Jiang Xin has entered the character, this time she will not be Concubine Hua or Fan Shengmei, she is Shen Jilan.

However, despite this, when she and the mother-in-law played by Ni Ping appeared at the same time, the audience saw that "acting feeling" again.

　　For an actor like Jiang Xin, hard work and attitude have never been a problem. Even if her performance in some episodes is unsatisfactory, it seems that the outside world is more willing to attribute it to her "not picking dramas" - she once said that she does not want to set up for herself The framework, team, distribution, and broadcasting platform are never factors she considers, and filming itself is a kind of happiness - and she does not want to doubt her strength and acting skills.

Of course, we can think that actors should still cherish the reputation they have finally obtained, and should choose roles (at least they should be suitable ones) to consolidate the actor's image; but on the other hand, some doubts may not be so difficult to understand, maybe Jiang Xin is the Enjoying different roles, or brilliant, or "mediocre", this is all due to "try it out".

Not having an "academic" background has always been a hurdle in Jiang Xin's heart that is difficult to get around. She also said that she would not choose a role, but also because of her lack of professional education in college, she felt that she needed a sufficient number of real people. Only her performance experience can make up for the shortcomings of her theoretical study.

It is hoped that in such a process, Jiang Xin can experience enough characters, polish her acting skills, and maintain and maintain her own share of her own happiness in acting.

　　(The author is a postdoctoral fellow in film studies and a teacher at the School of Journalism and Communication, Shanghai International Studies University)