一邊看，以及看完之後，就在想，這部電影的導演或編劇應該是女的吧。

 

果然，導演兼編劇Kat Coiro。

 

自以為是的編劇導演，拍著一個有關自以為是的女人對婚姻不滿，然後跟個青春肉體有段浪漫關係之後，自以為覺醒地離開了婚姻。

 

故事就是這樣，只是這個自以為是的導演編劇企圖想要把她拍得像是個受盡委屈，不被理解，丈夫不解風情，不願意溝通的哀怨少婦，終於解脫枷鎖追尋自我的偉大歷程。

 

一整個假掰！這個女主角是個非常假掰的女人，這部電影是講一個非常假掰的"女性意識覺醒"過程的電影。就這樣。

 

我只看到，是這個女主角Jane，從頭到尾就是她想做什麼就做甚麼，而且十分作做。

 

最後要離開了，還要刻意到與男主角約好的火車站，然後站在對面月臺，要讓男主角看著她搭車離去。很無謂也很無聊。

 

白天跟青春肉體躲在街角接吻，晚上丈夫回到家就熱情迎上接吻。Come on ! 對"精子戰爭"這一類的概念有初步瞭解的人，都清楚這種行為背後的motivation與mechanism是什麼。

 

她只是想要重拾19歲時的青春歲月而已。

 

也難怪，她的工作是寫寫時尚專欄，寫這種行銷販賣夢想皮相的東西，也難怪她自己也還一直在作夢。

 

說著要寫關於祖母經歷過兩次世界大戰的書，以一個在英國的家庭的觀點。聽起來像是會有點內涵的，結果好幾年下來，不但連當初訪談的錄音帶都還沒聽完，在聽的內容也幾乎不是所謂的對於戰爭年代的經歷，唯一提到的一次是講到說在遠離前線的英國鄉間躲在防空洞裡，看到隔鄰男人髮際間的血漬。就這樣。所有對戰爭的描述就只有如此而已。其他只是祖母在講著說在那久遠以前她如何認識她的祖父，以及不時地叫她拿開錄音機而已。

 

果然，不論在何種境地之下，人們會關心的永遠只會從自身開始，民族國家大義信仰宗教政治世俗社會價值這種東西其實離日常生活遠得很。

 

膚淺的人，即使有個看似嚴肅的寫作主題，結果也只能有膚淺的內容。更何況還停滯多年寫不出來。

 

錢包被偷走了，要掛失補發信用卡也得要她先生打電話，先生還有記錄著她的信用卡號在電腦裡面，那麼這樣作做瀟灑地在火車站一走了之，妳的火車票錢哪來的？妳有生活能力嗎？妳是不是要拿贍養費？如果這些都不成問題，那就代表之前的依賴哀怨根本就是耍公主病；如果這些通通都有問題還要拿贍養費才能過活，那麼也只證明瞭女主角真的只是個廢物，還是不要再出來害人比較好。

 

這是個沒有內在的靈魂，也是部沒有靈魂的電影。電影裡面許多畫面拍得是挺美的，但是內在很空洞。就跟時尚專欄一樣。看起來洋洋灑灑美美的，其實什麼內容都沒有。

 

如果這樣的印象形成與連結，來自導演的手法與刻意，那我必須承認這個導演編劇很厲害。不過實際上整部電影看下來，我只覺得編劇兼導演就是在拍一個空心的女人對婚姻無聊感到不滿意，自己的生活也乏善可陳，旅遊途中找到個青春肉體就談個浪漫"插"曲，然後就離開她的婚姻了。

 

如果以男性的觀點，大概都會如同我心裡所想的一樣：幹，要走就走吧，雖然我可能還沒有幹妳幹到膩，知道妳去找年輕肉體滾牀單也還願意接受妳回來，結果妳擺這種姿態來離開。滾遠一點吧，也許一開始會失落一點，但是之後就會覺得，幹，終於解脫了。整天伴著一個陰陽怪氣，只會耍哀怨一直要人關注 的假掰公主 ，長得再正也會煩的。

 

電影最後女主角窩在火車上又在聽訪談錄音帶寫筆記。她還有外貌，還可以有幾年時間有人關注她。然後呢？這樣的空心女人，彷彿離開了婚姻，就是做了件多麼了不起的成就一樣。這樣的任性假掰，相處之下只會讓人倒胃口的。還有，不要以為場景在在火車上，一個美美的女主角在讀書寫東西，就可以讓人跟Before Sunrise開場時的Julie Delpy做連結。抱歉，差得遠了。

 

寫了上面這些會被八卦版認為是仇女的文字後，我check了一下IMDB上面的review，結果發覺我並不孤單：

 

1.

I'm 'SICK-&-TIRED' of Hollywood doing their best to make men look bad, while portraying women as wholesome & trust-worthy!! I can think of more than a dozen films, &, I'm SURE there's many more, which portray women in a positive light (i.e. 'justified'/condoning their indiscretions/betrayals, with the LAME excuse of being lonely or from some kind of 'victim-mentality'. WHY..., does Hollywood want peeps to condone female infidelity yet they want us to be angry & un-forgiving if a male strays...??? What's with the double-standards??? Ohhh, yeah...; it's called the "P***y-pass" ("I'm a girl, so, I can do whatever I want & get away with it, because, I have a internal reproductive organs"). Seriously...??? W-T-H?!? I challenge ANYone to name 1 film which purports to exonerate a male when/if he has strayed.

Also, many years ago I realized another commonly used ploy to sell movies. Yeah, I know; it's meant to "garner sympathy" for the female character (annnd, I've lost my ability to care....). It's the part in SO many movies where, often for inane reasons, a female is up-set (insert petty reasons here). It's the scene I call: "here's the part, where we feel sorry for the girl". 

Hey Hollywood!! Hows about making a movie (for once) where we can empathize with (or sympathize for) the male character (e.g.: after his un-faithful tramp becomes fully aware of the pain she's caused)?? Oh yeah--right. That doesn't 'sell' because, men aren't supposed to 'feel' anything. We're just supposed to DIE in wars, or, from saving the "fair maiden" (macho crap!) in your horrendously formulaic, NON-realistic films. Pathetic!!!

I could write a book on your double-standards....

 

2.

i often wondered how a lousy and deadbeat screenplay would be realized and okay-ed by the production people(the investors) to go ahead, and this film is right on the money and a living example of what i've just said. from the very beginning of the brain-dead film. the man and the woman both did a horrible acting, holding books in their hands, but their eyes never moved between lines. they were just holding the books without any believable acting. then the incident when they were wrongly brought to an address and the woman found her wallet was missing. well, if it was the man who's paying the taxi fee, she got no reason to roam in her purse. then the unreasonable response of the taxi driver was also over re-acted. and when she found that she lost her purse, again, she didn't react as the average people who just found out that they had lost their credit cards, their cash and whatsoever. it's just like either it happened very often or she couldn't care less, there was no normal anxiety, agitation, upset emotions showed in her body language, facial expressions and her voice. she was so calm and so unbelievably cool. her stupid acting was never corrected by the stupid and blind director. then scene after scene, every sentence of the stupid dialog just kept floating up one after another, and the poor acting of the female main character and everybody involved in this stupid and bore-to-death film simply never improved and never corrected. i was like watching a bunch of dead fish in a fish tank all afloat on top of the water, no nothing, just a big Nada!

 

3.

I'm sorry if you're going to film a film with such a sensual Blurb, the least you can do is throw some sensuality into it. I mean if you want to know how to do this right, go and watch

UNTIL September http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088330/

that was done in 1984. This was a beautifully shot movie that remains in my memory after all these years. 

In UNTIL September there was a sensuality that made you want to hop on a plane to Paris and have your own "affair to remember". These lovers allow you to crawl into their skin and experience every beautiful and painful moment of the time they had together. It was film that brought out the voyeur in me. Some scenes so painfully raw you felt you should look away from it.

This film has shaky cinematography, her cheating on her husband didn't feel like cheating because we weren't allowed to sense they had anything to lose in their relationship. "It's like telling reading a book and it just says, "They are married." Yet there is no show of a loving nurturing marriage. Maybe that is the point so it gives the wife the okay to cheat with this younger man who gave off a "Con artist" vibe even if he was sincere in his attraction to her.

The elderly woman she was listening to on tapes' story sounded more interesting then this Bosworth character's story.

If you're looking for a movie that you can enjoy the country view while making your own whoopee without worry that he or she rather watch the movie than be kissing you, this is the film you're looking for.

 

4.

 

And While We Were Here - brief

Troubled couple arrive in Naples and settle in. He to play viola for concerts, she to work on WWII novel / memoir. Gorgeous settings of isle of Ischia, offset by serious, depressing tone of a husband and wife who can no longer communicate with each other. She meets a 19 year old, still very boyish, reckless and full of youthful energy. He comes off as initially annoying, and I cannot say he grew on me, but I did get accustomed to him. The plot meanders around as the young wife (Kate Bosworth - quite good here) broods much of the time. Much of her story is internal, thinking and rethinking, about her situation and possibilities. All the time, she is listening to recordings of her grandmother, recalling her own youth. "Chick flick" might resonate more with female viewers.

 

5.

I just finished watching this movie, having watched it because I was intrigued by the title -- sometimes titles just hook me right off the bat and make me want to see if the movie lives up to the expectations the title created -- and I enjoy watching Kate Bosworth ever since the Young Americans TV series in the Summer of 2000.

Also, having been to Ischia many years ago, I hoped it would remind me of my sojourn.

From the trailer, I was expecting a gentle romance in a faraway picturesque island between two people who have found each other.

Wrong.

Instead we have a travelogue featuring a woman looking for fun who finds it by having a fling with with a bored college kid. Granted, he is good-looking but she could have picked just about any other kid off the street considering how little chemistry there is between the two. We're not even entirely certain what prompts her to do this considering how much her husband -- in his own way -- loves her, and she must him. I don't think the movie can even be considered romantic fluff because there isn't any fluff. Romantic or otherwise. Or sensuality. We aren't even made to care what happens.

During the movie I wondered to myself what Woody Allen would have done with this.

I was disappointed with the waste of such a good title.

 

6.

 

Kat Coiro's And While We Were Here strives in vain to form a kinship withVoyage to Italy, but her insipid film ends up looking more like a version of Roberto Rossellini's masterpiece reworked as a photo diary posted on Facebook. Coiro means to evoke irony with her depiction of a marriage falling apart amid the romantic locales of Italy, yet her overindulgence in photographing the gorgeous vistas and old-world charm of the country only expose more how glaringly undeveloped and derivative her idly-shaped characters and film are.

Kate Bosworth plays Jane, a writer with a privileged white chip on her shoulder who's stuck in an uneventful union with violist Leonard (Iddo Goldberg). After traveling to Naples, where Leonard is to play in an orchestra, Jane eventually ferries to Ischia, where she bumps into 19-year-old Caleb (Jamie Blackley). The teen is just what Jane needs after some bad sex with the brooding and boring Leonard, someone who just doesn't “see” her (according to Jane), as the tank top-wearing Caleb is filled with youthful vigor and wit, his underachieving bro attitude laced with just the right amount of sensitivity where he can talk about Michelangelo's subtext with confidence. As the pheromones Caleb emits are too much for Jane to resist, she begins an affair with him and is swept away, finding new inspiration in writing her book about her grandmother's life during World War II. This is the kind of substance Coiro uses to fill her tell-don't-show narrative, ultimately not even holding an ashen Pompeii victim to her classic inspiration.

Speaking of concrete images of death as crumbling matrimony metaphor, Coiro uses her own symbol in the memory of a miscarried child Jane uses as a weapon against Leonard when their unhappiness reaches a fever pitch. Because Leonard is so thinly drawn, his presence is only meant to add “nuance” to Jane's character so her dispirited situation becomes dramatically gratifying, and only exposes Jane's stuck-up personality more. Jane is so detached from reality to the point where she appears to live in a romance novel, her standards so high that her irritation toward her husband stem from the fact that he can't reach her level—and, in the end, Caleb naturally suffers the same fate as well. Coiro, not knowing how to use her needless widescreen ratio, frames these confrontation scenes like cheap Antonioni, failing to capture any sly critique of bourgeois ennui he excelled at.

More egregious is how Coiro orchestrates the film's universe to actively work in Jane's favor, with no rewarding conflict arising because the world throws only incidents that benefit her emotional state. Jane was bound to meet someone like Caleb when she's so dispassionate about her husband, and of course this younger man recites Italian poetry and appropriate viola jokes when he looks more likely to rattle off Dave Matthews Band lyrics. It's only Claire Bloom's unseen grandmother who has the right idea to get out, ending the film with a “Now shut that thing off!” toward Jane's tape recorder. Bloom, like us, would most likely rather stroll through an ancient city with Ingrid Bergman at our side.

相關文章