This director is vindictive.

Chapter 362 Where Did Mom Go: A Battle of Acting Skills Among Three National Mothers
The reason why Chen Mo chose Sarina, Zhang Kaili, and Liu Lili as candidates was precisely because they possessed certain qualities.

What qualities? The qualities of a traditional Chinese mother.

Soon, Sarina, Zhang Kaili, and Liu Lili, three actresses known for playing mothers, arrived at the audition venue. Chen Mo personally greeted them at the door and quickly went to greet them as they got out of different cars.

"Teacher Sa, you must be tired from coming all the way from Inner Mongolia!"

Chen Mo grasped Sarina's hand, noticing her travel-worn appearance and the dry scent of the grassland still lingering in her hair.

Sarina laughed heartily: "Director Chen, you're too kind. I was recording a program in Beijing, and when I heard there was an audition, I came straight here."

As she spoke, she took out a brown paper package from her cloth bag: "I brought some dried beef jerky from home, so everyone can have a taste later."

Just then, Zhang Kaili's car arrived.

As soon as she got out of the car, she waved with a smile and said, "Wow, Sister Sa is even faster than me!"

"Hello, Teacher Zhang! Thank you for coming all this way!"

Chen Mo stepped forward to greet her. Looking at Zhang Kaili, she was dressed very simply today, and her hair was styled into a simple ponytail. She didn't look like the sophisticated woman she usually appeared in urban dramas.

"Hey, it's just an audition, what's the trouble or not! It's all part of the job!" Zhang Kaili said with a smile.

The last to arrive was Liu Lili, who had just come from the airport. She was dragging a small suitcase and looked a little embarrassed when she saw Chen Mo: "Sorry, Director Chen, I just flew back from Los Angeles and I haven't adjusted to the time difference yet."

Her eyes were a little red and swollen, clearly indicating that she hadn't been idle on the plane, having been studying the script the whole time.

Chen Mo quickly took her luggage: "Teacher Liu, you're working too hard. You could rest for a day."

"No need, no need!" Liu Lili waved her hand and took out a well-worn copy of the original novel "The Heartbroken" from her bag.

"I marked all of Xia Qunfang's scenes on the plane, look."

The pages were covered with highlighter marks and sticky notes, and some places were stained with coffee.

After the three veteran actors exchanged pleasantries, Chen Mo led them to the prepared lounge. The room was specially decorated warmly, with hot tea and snacks on the table. Yang Mi and Liu Yifei also came over to greet them and helped pour tea and serve water.

"The three teachers, please take a break first. We will begin the audition in half an hour."

Chen Mo said, "Today, I mainly want to see everyone's understanding of the character Xia Qunfang, so there's no need to feel pressured."

"Hello, three mothers!" At this moment, Hu Ge, who had been quiet all along, also greeted them with a smile.

However, his move surprised the three veteran actors.

The three of them then laughed and looked Hu Ge up and down: "So it's you, Hu Ge, playing He Xi! You'll have to cooperate well later!"

After exchanging greetings, Sarina took out her reading glasses and began reviewing the script; Zhang Kaili practiced her expressions in front of the mirror, sometimes frowning and sometimes smiling; Liu Lili was the quietest, simply stroking the script cover with a thoughtful look in her eyes.

This scene deeply moved Chen Mo—three veteran actors who had already achieved great success were preparing so earnestly for a role; this is the true spirit of an actor.

Chen Mo gave each of the three a script. Yes, each of the three had one scene in the same scene and one scene in a different scene!
After a while, Chen Mo prepared the audition venue.

The first one to audition was Sarina!

Her audition scene was divided into two parts. One part was a scene of mending clothes, which was performed by all three teachers.

There's another rather unique scene, which isn't part of the original novel but was added by Chen Mo: the scene where Xia Qunfang touches the holographic projection.

"It's time to start!"

When Sarina put on coarse cloth clothes and bent down to mend a shirt, she still carried the unique "Mother Earth" aura of Wen Ta Niang from "Crossing the Guandong".

Chen Mo frowned as he stared at the monitor: "Teacher Sa, could you tone it down a bit more? Xia Qunfang's resilience is hidden beneath her timidity."

Although it was an audition, Chen Mo might not have gone through so much trouble for other actors, but here, Chen Mo was very meticulous.

He wasn't testing his acting skills; he was just going by feeling!

After adjusting her condition, Sarina returned to the game, but the muscle memory from years of portraying strong people at the bottom of society always gave her movements a force of "shouldering fate".

Sarna's slender fingers held the needle and thread, the coarse cloth shirt in her palm looking like a faded flag.

On the monitor, every flick of her wrist carried the force of kneading dough, just like in the TV series "Crossing the Guandong"—that was the rhythm of Wen's mother, the muscular memory of kneading suffering into vitality.

However, Chen Mo frowned slightly because Xia Qunfang's stitches seemed hesitant, with the thread lingering around her fingertips three times before she dared to put it down, as if every millimeter of cotton thread had to be measured through the length of the cold night.

Yang Mi muttered softly, "It's like a mother on the grassland taking care of her educated youth son..."

Liu Yifei pulled out the original text for comparison: "The book says that Xia Qunfang was even afraid of wasting thread if the stitches were too dense when she was mending, but Teacher Sa's technique for sewing shoe soles was too neat."

Chen Mo remained silent.

"Cut! Let's move on to the next segment!" Chen Mo didn't say much and went straight into the next scene.

As the lighting technician adjusted the particle effects during the hospital scene, the floating specks of light in the code highlighted the wrinkles around Sarina's eyes, making them appear as deep furrows.

When she reached out to touch the virtual universe created by her son, the monitor suddenly revealed a kind of disorienting shock—her fingertips were glowing. But the old woman in the original story, who couldn't even read an electricity bill, now had not bewilderment in her eyes, but rather the epiphany of a prophet crossing a stargate.

What Chen Mo actually needed was the layer of white mist that he breathed out and then dissipated on the glass window.

After Chen Mo called a halt, he frankly said, "You portrayed 'gratification,' but Xia Qunfang should be 'dazed' at this moment—she never understood her son's world in her entire life, and at the end of her life, she just instinctively wanted to touch those lights."

In fact, Yang Mi was right before. The sense of déjà vu she discovered about the grassland mother is the ultimate paradox of method actors: when Sarina spent thirty years refining the performance paradigm of "Mother Earth", those physical expressions that once made her a god have now become a transparent cocoon that traps Xia Qunfang.

Just as Liu Yifei was surprised to realize when she turned the pages of the book, true humility makes even "saving" seem like a luxury—Xia Qunfang's loose threads weren't sewn in, but were carefully hidden in.

Chen Mo repeatedly replayed the clip on the monitor. Sarina portrayed Wen's mother's resilience, like a towering poplar uprooted from the black soil, but Xia Qunfang's tenacity was like a crooked foxtail grass growing in a crack in the cement.
When Sarina's unconsciously straightened back revealed the dignity of the performer, Xia Qunfang, who had truly lived a hunched life, quietly faded away amidst the overly perfect performance.

A brief silence fell over the audition room. Sarina loosened her grip on the white sheet of the hospital bed, her knuckles still trembling slightly from the performance.

She looked at the monitor playback and suddenly smiled bitterly: "Director Chen is right. I reached out like I was grabbing a lifeline—but Xia Qunfang didn't even have the strength to 'grab' it."

Chen Mo gestured to the makeup artist to apply some gray powder to Sarina's temples, saying, "Teacher Sa, your acting is fine, but Wen Ta Niang in 'Crossing the Guandong' is just too classic."

He made a "cover" gesture.

The monitor was playing back the scene of Sari touching the holographic projection—his calloused fingertips were already taut three inches from the starlight, as if to pierce through the illusion.

“Let’s do it again.” Sarina suddenly took off her wig, revealing her real short gray hair.

"I was just thinking that Xia Qunfang must have had her hair down when she passed away."

She picked up the thermos, the wrinkles around her eyes smoothing out in the rising steam: "When my mother passed away, she even thought the mirror she used to comb her hair was too heavy."

Chen Mo's eyes lit up. When Sarina lay back on the hospital bed without makeup, her sparse white hair, no longer covered by a wig, sunken into the pillow, she suddenly "collapsed"—not in a physical hunchback, but in a kind of collapse of vitality.

When she raised her hand this time, her forearm seemed to be held by an invisible thread, and her aged fingertips drew a hesitant arc in the air.

"Mom actually doesn't understand these formulas."

Liu Yifei's voice-over suddenly stopped.

In the lens, Sarina's pupils reflect virtual starlight, a strange blend of turbidity and clarity. Her lips twitch as if she's about to laugh, but in the end, only a childlike bewilderment emerges—the most genuine sense of bewilderment a mother feels when faced with her son's life's work.

"Cut!" Chen Mo straightened up from in front of the monitor: "That's it."

He couldn't find the right words for a moment, but Yang Mi suddenly interjected: "Like holding a bowl of scalding hot porridge, it's obviously too hot to handle but you dare not let go?"

Sarna propped himself up on the edge of the bed, his forehead still damp with the sweat from the performance: "When I was young, I delivered lambs on the grassland. The look in the eyes of a mother sheep as she licked her lamb before she died was just like that—she clearly couldn't understand the fence of the two-legged creatures, but she knew she should push the child there."

Chen Mo remained conflicted.

Soon it was Zhang Kaili's turn.

Unlike Sarina, her scene was arranged by Chen Mo to be an interaction with Hu Ge. It was an under-the-table scene where "Xia Qunfang hides outside the door and cries after He Xi goes mad".

This scene has no dialogue whatsoever, relying solely on body language and micro-expressions, and this type of scene is the ultimate test of an actor's performance range!

Because Hu Ge was involved in this scene, and since it was an audition, the door was actually made from the bookshelf inside the room.

"let's start!"

The lights in the audition room dimmed, leaving only a beam of overhead light shining on Ms. Zhang Kaili.

Zhang Kaili was already standing outside the "door" with her back hunched over, the collar of her dusty cotton shirt frayed.

In the darkness where no light reached, Hu Ge suddenly kicked over a chair inside the "door" and hysterically shouted, "You all don't understand!"
The sound of the glass shattering against the wall sent a shiver down Zhang Kaili's spine.

She instinctively reached for the "door," but when her hand touched the virtual doorknob, she recoiled as if burned, her fingers clenching the hem of her clothes in spasms, her knuckles turning white.

"Crack—" Hu Ge started tearing at the paper manuscripts on the bookshelf again.

Zhang Kaili's back slumped lower and lower, as if crushed by an invisible burden. She suddenly covered her mouth, and the veins on the back of her hand bulged like old tree roots—the marks of tenosynovitis left from years of needlework. A half-whisper escaped through her fingers, only to be swallowed back down as a muffled "clunk" in her throat.

The pigeons inside the door suddenly froze. He heard it.

Zhang Kaili's left foot unconsciously rubbed against the cement floor, the sole of her cloth shoe making a soft, rustling sound. This detail wasn't in the script!

But for some reason, it seems to fit in exceptionally well here.

Hu Ge's breathing grew heavier and heavier. He began to scratch at the plaster on the wall near the door with his fingernails, lime dust falling onto his leather shoes. The first scratches were driven by anger, but they quickly became mechanical repetitions, and blood soon seeped from under his fingernails.

Chen Mo sat up abruptly. In the close-up shot on the monitor, Zhang Kaili's hand covering her mouth suddenly loosened a crack—she was wiping away tears with the calluses on the back of her hand, the rough skin making her eyes even redder.

"Bang!" Hu Ge suddenly slammed his head against the door.

Zhang Kaili finally turned around. She didn't look at the camera; her bloodshot eyes were fixed on a point in the void, but the corners of her mouth were strangely upturned—an expression that resembled laughter when she was crying to the extreme. She slowly squatted down, her movements like a slow-motion video, finally curling into a small ball, the white hair at the back of her head looking like a dandelion in the light.

"CUT!" Chen Mo didn't know what to say.

How should I put it? It's good in every way, but I always feel like something's missing.

"Oh, right," he asked curiously, "Teacher Zhang, the way your left foot unconsciously rubbed the ground just now was particularly fitting. Is there anything special about it?"

Zhang Kaili said with a smile, "That's right, because rural women are worried about their shoes, and when they cry, they are thinking about how to wear down the soles as little as possible."

Chen Mo was taken aback for a moment upon hearing this, and then he felt a sense of admiration.

I must say, this scene was truly brilliant.

Chen Mo suddenly felt like he had shot himself in the foot, because the veteran actors' performances were truly superb.

He then understood why many productions don't let actresses like them audition, but instead directly cast them in roles.

Because auditioning is just asking for trouble!
They all acted as well as those renowned actors and actresses, so how do we choose?
Which director wouldn't be troubled by this?
The problem isn't that things are bad, but that everything is too good.

But since we've come this far, we definitely have to make an election.

The third one is Liu Lili. This mother has a rather introverted personality. Compared to Sarina and Zhang Kaili, Chen Mo feels that she is the one who best fits his image of Xia Qunfang in terms of appearance.

Of course, it's too early to say that now.

In the original novel, there are actually not many detailed descriptions of Xia Qunfang.

This scene was added by Chen Mo.

"It's time to start!"

The audition room lights were adjusted to a warm yellow, and the bedding on the hospital bed was deliberately distressed to be a faded blue checkered pattern. Liu Lili was curled up at the head of the bed, her gray hair dusted with flour to create a mottled effect, and there were even frostbite scars drawn on her knuckles!

This was something she had the makeup artist do specially. According to her understanding, a mother like Xia Qunfang should have cracks under her fingernails from years of washing clothes.

Liu Lili's fingers suddenly began to tremble nervously. She grabbed the bamboo needles and yarn, knitting two stitches and then unraveling one, the yarn ends tangled in a mess.

When she was knitting for the fifth time, she suddenly rubbed the corner of her eye with the back of her hand—a red mark immediately appeared there, like a bloodstain pulled out by the yarn.

"Size 37. No, it's size 39."

Her voice was slurred, like she was holding a mouthful of syrup that wouldn't dissolve. Her left little finger unconsciously twirled a thread end—a habit she'd picked up from observing the elderly in the nursing home.

Hu Ge plays He Xi after she goes mad.

He was unusually quiet.

Blind eyes!

In the close-up shot on the monitor, Liu Lili looked up at her son, her hand suddenly tensing, the veins bulging like earthworms. She continued knitting the ill-formed socks, but the yarn suddenly broke.

Liu Lili's eyes suddenly went unfocused. She touched Hu Ge's palm and smiled, "Xi, Mom knitted you a formula scarf."

He made an infinity symbol in the air with his right hand: "Look, this is the curve you drew."

The prepared ball of yarn suddenly rolled off the bed. Liu Lili instinctively lunged to catch it, her knee hitting the edge of the bed with a dull thud. This unexpected event completely broke Hu Ge's composure, who was supposed to remain silent.

He couldn't hold back his emotions and his eyes welled up with tears—he noticed the crooked patch sewn on the knee of her long johns.

When Chen Mo shouted "Cut," Liu Lili was still in the knitting posture.

When Hu Ge rushed to help collect the bamboo needles, she was shocked to find that the needle tips were stained with blood. It turned out that she had deliberately pricked her fingertips with the needles!
Liu Lili smiled casually and said, "Xia Qunfang is getting old and her eyesight is failing. It's common for her to get pricked by bamboo needles."

Everyone present had tears in their eyes at that moment.

After the audition, Chen Mo played the three videos simultaneously for Hu Ge to see: "Who do you think looks most like your 'mom'?"

Hu Ge watched Liu Lili's clips repeatedly, and suddenly pointed at the screen and said, "That's the way she hooks her little finger when she's knitting—my mother always did that to prevent the yarn from getting tangled."

This personal connection made Chen Mo lean more towards Liu Lili.

But to be honest, the other two are not bad either, so he was a little conflicted.

"What do you guys think?" Chen Mo asked, looking at Liu Yifei and Yang Mi.

Yang Mi suddenly spoke up: "I just remembered a scene in 'Aftershock' where she first twisted the corner of her child's clothes before crying when her daughter's body was found."

"I think Xia Qunfang must be this kind of mother, one who is even afraid of letting her sadness soil her child, right?"

Chen Mo's fingertips slid back and forth across the tablet, projecting three audition videos side-by-side onto the giant screen in the conference room. Sarina's resilience, Zhang Kaili's forbearance, and Liu Lili's sense of heartbreak flowed and converged on the screen like three rivers.

Yang Mi secretly pressed a tissue to the corner of her eye, while Liu Yifei's fingernails unconsciously scratched several dents into the script.

"Inform Ms. Liu Lili that the contract will be signed tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM."

Yang Mi jumped up with an "Ah!": "Then Teacher Sa and Teacher Zhang!"

"I know they are all very good, but there can only be one role, so I can only apologize!" Chen Mo said helplessly.

Thus, the casting for "The Heartbroken" was officially completed.

Of course, there's still some time before filming, so the necessary preparations still need to be made.

For example, in order to help Liu Lili and her son Hu Ge develop a better understanding and rapport.

Therefore, Chen Mo asked Liu Lili and Hu Ge to move into the dilapidated tenement building where the set was being built in advance, and personally sewed costumes for He Xi and Hu Ge every day and took care of their daily lives.

From that moment on, the way the two addressed each other became the way a mother and son truly addressed each other.

(End of this chapter)