#in blossom

[xiaolanhua]

@asiandramanet april creator bingo – free choice — inspired by tumblr's 2024 april fools

Liu Xue Yi as Pan Yue In Blossom 花间令 (2024)

[dangermousie]

Cdramas have insane lack of upcoming schedules, even more insane censorship, and parts of fandoms that are downright terrifying but what other industry is going to give us:

(1) what if God was a gorgeous trolling sub who fell in love with his pet chicken?

(2) what if we rebel against heaven while wearing fur and bondage gear, with our hero being a demigod prince turned mine slave with the power of the monochrome and his OTP a magic crystal in human form?

and

(3) what if the most gorgeous man in the empire had a beloved dead wife who came back in the body of his stalker?

As shows airing AT THE SAME TIME!

It is like the fanfic authors of my dreams actually getting their hands on enormous budgets to put their wildest ideas into reality!

[gusucloud]

The beauty of In Blossom (1)

[01432853]

Is he Mr. Pan? Isn't that the ugly woman? How could she sit beside Mr. Pan?

In Blossom 花间令 (2024) • EP 1

[dramagifs]

Pan Yue | In Blossom

[mademoiselle-red]

The historical inspiration behind In Blossom’s Pan Yue

From Wikipedia (english version): 

Pan Yue (Chinese: 潘岳; 247–300), courtesy name "Anren" (安仁), was a prominent Chinese fu poet in the Western Jin dynasty. He is popularly referred to as Pan An (潘安) and was well known for his good looks from a young age. "Pan An" has become the Chinese byword for handsome men.

The drama chose Liu Xueyi, known for his beauty in costume dramas, to play Pan Yue:

From Wikipedia (Chinese version): 

三十余岁担任河阳县令，下令全县种桃花，有“河阳一县花”之称。

When he around 30 years old, he became the magistrate of Heyang County, ordered the whole county to plant peach blossoms, and was known as "the flower of Heyang County".

In the drama, Pan Yue buries his wife in a patch of peach blossoms near Heyang:

潘岳是中国历史上有名的美男子，据《世说新语》所载，潘岳每次外出，都会有不少女子手牵手地围着他的车子，又向他的车子投掷水果。成语“掷果盈车”即来自于此典故。

Pan Yue is considered one of the most famous handsome men in Chinese history. According to Shishuo Xinyu (A New Account of the Tales of the World, a 4th century anthology of biographical stories about scholars, musicians, and artists of the 2nd-4th centuries): every time Pan Yue went out, women would surround his carriage and throw fruits at him. 

Here is how the drama recreated this famous episode:

妻：杨氏，元康八年（公元298年）去世。潘岳对亡妻甚是怀思，著有《内顾诗二首》、《杨氏七哀诗》、《哀永逝文》、《悼亡诗》等。

Wife: Madam Yang, died in the year 298 AD. To express his grief, Pan Yue wrote [a series of famous mourning poems that I am too lazy to translate]. 

Here is our fictional Pan Yue reciting an excerpt from one of the mourning poems historical Pan Yue wrote for Madam Yang:

[movielosophy]

In Blossom | You must've mistaken me for someone else.

[ladynamie]

In Blossom 花间令 (2024) | Episode 3

[tytangfei]

I still am not over the choice to turn parts of pan yue's hair white. He's menacing, he's merciless, yes yes, it's what he portrays outwardly, but also visible to everyone else are those streaks of white, his grief in full display, and not a single person thinks he is mourning his dead wife. He is cunning and secretive, but not with this. He could've dyed it back to black, but he doesn't, and so displays his greatest heartbreak, and no one sees this vulnerability.

[romchat]

In Blossom visual analysis (ep. 1-7): How to film a gothic romance

Although I'm not completely convinced about some of the writing choices of In Blossom, I absolutely LOVE the show's production design and cinematography. @mademoiselle-red wrote a great post about how main character Pan Yue fits the gothic romantic lead archetype, and those gothic elements are not only present in the script but also in the show's visual storytelling.

Lighting

A key element of gothic romance is its atmosphere of mystery and suspense.

Something I really like about In Blossom is that despite its dark subject matter, many of its scenes take place during the day. One of the show's main themes is that appearances can be misleading and the cinematography often plays with that notion by linking light to deception and darkness to truth. Note how many of the emotionally honest beats of Yang Caiwei and Pan Yue's relationship happen at night (e.g., their couple escapades at the Li Residence, Ghost Market, and Life and Death gambling house) while fakery, corruption, and evildoing happen in the day. It's with this subversion of our expectations for light that the show creates an unsettling atmosphere.

And these lighting choices also help set up Pan Yue as a classic gothic romance anti-hero, someone the female lead, Yang Caiwei, fears but still finds herself drawn to.

Look at how Pan Yue is lit when shot through Yang Caiwei's subjective point of view. The strong use of light creates a lot of contrast--through her eyes, he is a mixture of light and dark, his morality as inscrutable as his shadowy figure.

Camera Angles and Shot Sizes

The show's use of low angles and close-ups further reinforces the idea that Pan Yue is unpredictable and even dangerous.

In cinematography, low-angle shots tend to make the subject look more powerful and menacing, and the show uses this technique to great effect.

Even in the intimacy of close-up shots, we can sense the threat emanating from Pan Yue. He’s always shot just a smidgeon too close for comfort.

For example, look at how much Liu Xueyi's face fills the frame in an early "romantic" scene. The shot feels almost claustrophobic as if he's so single-minded about his goals that he has no choice but to dominate the frame (and Yang Caiwei). It's an unnerving moment despite the soft words coming out of his mouth.

Side Note: I live for Pan Yue's (vampiric) long shots. The production design team was smart for dressing the character in dark clothes with such a sleek cut and drape--he looks like a sexy bat.

The Nosferatu references in Yang Caiwei's tomb are also perfect.

Composition and Framing

And finally, like any good gothic romance, In Blossom illustrates how love can drive one to despair and even madness.

Because of this, my FAVORITE scene of the show has to be the introduction of Shangguan Zhi. Her obsessive pursuit of beauty in hopes of seducing Pan Yue has left her a shell of a human being, and the scene's composition perfectly encapsulates this with how it focuses on the elegant lines of her body--not her face or personhood.

Shangguan Zhi is trapped by her delusional fantasy of a life with Pan Yue--see how she's boxed in by the vertical lines of the screen panel she admires--and the show regularly uses architectural lines to show how her desperation has trapped Yang Caiwei as well.

[simply-whump]

In Blossom : Episode 12

>> Whump List

[xiaolanhua]

Liu Xue Yi as Pan Yue In Blossom 花间令 (2024) – Ep. 19

[dangermousie]

This was !!!! He's blind, he thinks she might be dead, and he loses it utterly and starts screaming her real name.

And she comes to his hollering her real name.

Awwwww, finally!!!

This is DELICIOUSNESS!!!

SCREAMING SCREAMING SCREAMING FOREVER!!!!

And then I had to stop because RL but this will sustain me until evening because EXQUISITE EXQUISITE EXQUISITE!

[gusucloud]

In Blossom I Pan Yue in Ep.7

[01432853]

In Blossom 花间令 (2024) • Pan Yue

[dramagifs]

In Blossom | 2024