【译林】《某种物质》：完美笑容背后隐藏着一个暴力世界

文章信息

文：凯瑟琳·惠特利

来源：《视与听》2024年10月刊

译者信息：

2024文学系国际电影文化传播硕士 樊林静

正文内容

Coralie Fargeat’s razor-sharp feminist horror film The Substance explores the issue of ageing in a society that equates women’s worth with their looks. The French director discusses misogyny, metamorphoses and placing her own experience of being a woman at the centre of her work.

BY CATHERINE WHEATLEY

科拉莉·法尔雅（Coralie Fargeat）锐利的女权主义恐怖电影《某种物质》（The Substance）探讨了将女性的价值与她们外表等同的人类社会衰老问题。这位法国导演讨论了厌女症、蜕变，并将自己作为女性的经历置于作品的中心。

The bravura opening of Coralie Fargeat’s bonkers body horror The Substance tracks, via time-lapse photography, the installation and subsequent deterioration of a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. At first bright and gleaming and thrilling to tourists, over time it cracks and dulls, suffering the indignities of stubbed-out cigarette butts and spilled ketchup that seeps into its cracks and stains its faded surface.

通过延时摄影，科拉莉·法尔雅的疯狂身体恐怖片《某种物质》的华丽开场追踪了一个好莱坞星光大道留星地牌安装和随后退化的过程。一开始，它明亮、闪闪发光，让游客兴奋不已，但随着时间的推移它开始破裂、变得暗淡，经受着烟头和倾洒的番茄酱的屈辱，这些番茄酱渗入裂缝，沾污它褪色的表面。

Not since Pixar’s Up (2009) has a film offered such a masterclass in narrative exposition in its first wordless five minutes, gracefully cueing in the backstory of Elisabeth Sparkle, a once white-hot ingénue who is now the rather worn-down presenter of a cheesy Jane Fonda-style aerobics show, gamely incarnated by Demi Moore. It’s a potent metaphor for the vicissitudes of celebrity, and a smart explanation for Elisabeth’s decision to experiment with ‘The Substance’: a sinister product that promises a better version of herself (provided it’s properly administered, which of course it won’t be). Elisabeth is still gorgeous but exhausted by the upkeep involved in maintaining her looks in middle age: little wonder she wants a quick fix. Rather than an Ozempic-style makeover, though, Elisabeth gets Sue (a radiant Margaret Qualley) – a younger, more beautiful incarnation of the actress who rips her way out of a gaping wound in Elisabeth’s back and immediately replaces her at work. And as Sue pushes at the limits of the rules governing The Substance’s use, Elisabeth begins to age at a horrifying rate, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘she’s her own worst enemy’.

自皮克斯的《飞屋环游记》（Up, 2009）以来，还没有哪部电影在片头零台词的五分钟里就呈现出如此精湛的叙事技艺，如此优雅地讲述伊丽莎白·斯巴克的背景故事——伊丽莎白曾经是一个人气超高的天真少女，现在却成了一个俗气的简·方达（Jane fonda）式有氧运动秀的疲惫主持人，而黛米·摩尔（Demi Moore）大胆地扮演了这个角色。这是名人兴衰的有力象征，也解释了伊丽莎白决定接受“某种物质”实验的原因：一个承诺给出更好版本自己的邪恶产品（在使用得当的前提下，但当然这是不可能的）。伊丽莎白仍然很美，但也被中年保养外形这档子事搞得筋疲力尽：难怪她想要快速解决问题。然而，与司美格鲁肽式的改头换面不同，伊丽莎白得到了苏（由光彩四射的玛格丽特·夸利饰）——一个更年轻、更美丽的女演员的化身，她从伊丽莎白背部的伤口中挣脱出来，并立即取代了她的工作。当苏突破“某种物质“使用规则的限制时，伊丽莎白开始以令人恐惧的速度衰老，给了“她是她自己最坏的敌人”这句话全新的含义。

“I work a lot with symbolism,” Fargeat explains, discussing the origin of the Walk of Fame sequence. The Substance was inspired by the mid-life crisis of sorts that Fargeat underwent when she turned 40, her sense that society has little time or attention for women of a certain age. “The fact that the main character is an actress was a way of symbolising a heightened version of what every woman can feel, and the heightened version of an actress is the Walk of Fame: all those symbols that stand in for love, the fact you exist, that you’re seen, that people want you. So I liked this image of the star that would represent her previous life and how violent it can be to have, like, the light that is taken out of you.”

法尔雅谈论星光大道段落起源时说到：“我经常研究象征主义”。《某种物质》的灵感来自于法尔雅40岁时所经历的中年危机，她认为社会对特定年龄段的女性几乎不花时间、没有关注。主角是一个女演员，这一事实象征着每个女人感受的更高版本，而女演员的更高版本就是星光大道：那些星星符号代表着你被爱、你存在、你被看见、人们需要你。所以我喜欢这个代表她过去人生的星星图像以及让人感受到从她身上夺走光芒是多么暴力。

As Elisabeth becomes increasingly decrepit, Moore had to withstand up to seven hours a day in make-up, emerging as a grotesque hag: toothless and desiccated. In response to the suggestion that the film perhaps reinforces the perception that the most monstrous thing a women can be is old, Fargeat insists that the film addresses “how at any age, women are led to feel that their only value is what they look like”; that there is always “some kind of preconceived appearance that you’re supposed to follow to be a woman: to be nice and polite and pretty and smile, of course, always smile.”

当伊丽莎白变得越来越衰老，摩尔必须承受一天花七个小时化妆，最后呈现出一个丑陋的巫婆：没有牙齿、形容枯槁。有人认为，这部电影似乎在强化某种暗示——一个女人最可怕的事情就是变老。对此，法尔雅坚持认为电影讲述的是“无论什么年龄，女人都在被引导认为她们的唯一价值就是外形”；以及“想要做个女人，总有一些某种先入为主的外观样态是你应该去追求的：友好、礼貌、漂亮、微笑，当然，你最好总是微笑”。

Hence the casting of one of the most beautiful stars in the world, as a woman so disgusted by what she sees in the mirror that she can’t stand to leave the house. “You can be as beautiful as you want, you will always be hard on yourself. The violence of society leads you to inflict violence on yourself.” So while the fear of female ageing has lent itself to genres from comedy (Death Becomes Her, 1992) to melodrama (Another Women’s Life,2012), from the outset, Fargeat – whose previous film, Revenge (2017), about a woman seeking vengeance on the men who raped her, was warmly received as an exemplary entry in the post #MeToo film canon – was clear The Substance had to be a horror film, and a surrealist one at that.

因此她选择了世界上最漂亮的女明星之一做女主角，来扮演一个如此厌恶镜中的自己以至于不能走出家门的女人。

“你已经很美了，但你总是对自己很苛刻。社会的暴力进一步引导你对自己施暴。尽管女性对衰老的恐惧已经遍布喜剧片（《飞越长生，1992》）和家庭情节剧（《另一个人的生活，2012》），法尔雅从一开始就非常清楚，《某种物质》必须是一部超现实主义的恐怖片。她的上一部电影《复仇》（2017）讲述了一个女人向强奸她的男人复仇的故事，并被视为一部宣传MeToo运动的经典作品。

“The movie is about flesh, sensations, violence, bones, blood. I wasn’t interested in filming age in a realistic way: filming an impaired person who can no longer work or leave the house for physical reasons.” The film, she says, is a mirror of society’s misogynistic mentality. “People tell me, ‘Oh yes, it’s a caricature.’ I’m sorry, it’s not. It’s concentrated in one movie, but unfortunately, it is that gross, it is that violent in the real world.”

“这部电影是关于肉体、感觉、暴力、骨头和鲜血的。我对以一种现实的方式拍摄年龄不感兴趣：比如拍摄一个有缺陷的人由于身体原因不能再工作或者离开家。”她说，这部电影是一面社会厌女思维的镜子。“人们告诉我，‘噢好吧，这是一部讽刺电影。’对不起，它不是。这些讽刺集中在一部电影里，很不幸的是，它在现实世界中太恶心、太暴力了。”

More than this, she argues, Elisabeth’s ageing is more a reflection of how we see her, not how she feels. In both Revenge and The Substance, Fargeat’s heroines display superhuman feats of strength. Both films climax, too, with extraordinary, almost risibly bloody acts of vengeance that serve as expressions, Fargeat explains, of female anger. “Elisabeth’s metamorphosis, while of course hurting her, at the same time gives her strength and freedom. I like the idea that becoming an old, crippled shell of a woman gives Elisabeth a lot of strength. Once she finally doesn’t care any more what she looks like, she can say ‘I don’t give a fuck, I do whatever I want. I can be rude, I can be gross, I can speak loud. I can be violent.’ Finally she can express how she feels inside. It was really important for me to show her expressing all her anger, all the violence that had been imposed on her.”

除此之外，她说，伊丽莎白的衰老更多是关于我们看待她，而不是她如何看待自己。在《复仇》（2017）和《某种物质》（2024）中，法尔雅的女主角都展现出超人般的力量。这两部电影也都以非凡的、几乎显而易见的血腥复仇行为来表达女性愤怒的方式达到了高潮，法尔雅解释说。“伊丽莎白的蜕变，尽管伤害了她，但同时也给了她力量和自由。我喜欢变成又老又残疾的女人给伊丽莎白很多力量这个点子。一旦她最终不再在意自己的外表，她就可以说‘我根本不在乎，我只在乎自己想要的。我可以粗鲁，可以恶心，可以讲话大声，可以暴力。’最终她可以表达自己内在的感受。对我来说，展现她表达自己所有的愤怒、所有强加给她的暴力，真的非常重要。”

The film requires quite a lot of selfexposure from its female stars, who spend a great deal of time naked. While at first wary of casting Moore, Fargeat became convinced she was right for the part after reading her autobiography. “I discovered a very different side of her that I didn’t know at all. She’s taken so many risks in her life. She really built herself alone. She’s very rock and roll! And once I’d read her autobiography it became really important to me that she came on board, because she really understood the themes.”

这部电影有很多女明星的自我剖析，片中她有很多时间都是裸体的。虽然一开始对选摩尔演女主角很谨慎，但法尔雅在看完摩尔的自传以后就非常确信这是一个正确的选择。“我发现了她身上很多我不知道的、完全不同的一面。她这辈子冒了太多险。她真的是自己成长起来的。她具有摇滚精神！读了她的自传后，她的加入对我来说真的很重要，因为她真的理解电影所表达的主题。”

The pair spent a lot of time discussing the nudity, and its centrality to the film. “Because I knew that if I wanted to have this relationship of trust, even if you’re ready to expose yourself, it’s still tough. And I knew that nothing could be discovered on the day. Everything had to be prepped, discussed and understood, because that’s the way those scenes were going to be powerful. It’s a lot of risk. So the environment and the crafting needed to be strong. From the start Demi understood that it was an important part of the film. And what she managed to create with her bodily performance is amazing: for instance, in the transformation scene, where she is naked and suffering, and where her body really expresses everything that happens inside and that you don’t see. That is so strong.”

两人花了很多时间讨论裸体，以及它在影片中的核心地位。“因为我知道即便你已经准备好了暴露自己，如果我想建立这个信任关系，仍然是非常困难的。我知道到了那一天什么新东西都发现不了，所以一切都必须被准备好、讨论完毕以及被理解透彻，因为这就是那些场景震撼人心的原因。这是很冒险的，因此环境和技艺必须有力。从一开始黛米就理解这是电影中很重要的一部分。她所创造的身体表演效果是很惊艳的：比如在两人转换身体的场景里，她裸着身体、表情痛苦，她的身体真的表达了一切发生在她体内你所看不见的那些东西。那是非常有力量的。”

Sue’s laboured emergence from Elisabeth’s writhing, bleeding body is a birth of sorts, a metaphor heightened by the repeated imagery of egg yolks, which appealed to Fargeat as “something that is organic, something that you can touch, something that has fluid, something that has a perfect shape and that’s gonna give birth to something else”.

苏吃力地从伊丽莎白扭动的、流血的身体里出来，这在某种程度上是一种诞生，蛋黄影像的重复出现强化了这一隐喻。对法尔雅来说，“蛋黄是有机的、你能去触碰的、流动的、拥有完美形状的以及可以创造新东西的。”

Given that Qualley is also of an age to be Moore’s daughter (indeed, Moore starred alongside Qualley’s mother, Andie MacDowell, as a pair of beautiful twentysomethings in 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire), is motherhood an underlying theme? “There is a parallel, of course, with birth. In some ways the film is about our desire to not die. That’s why we fear getting older, and no longer being seen, because it’s a metaphor for death. There’s a quest for eternity. Sue, like a child [to Elisabeth], allows her to not disappear totally, because some part of her still exists in the world: an extension of her. On the other hand, motherhood is a kind of transmission. And here it’s more replication. It’s not about caring for another. It’s more selfish, or more narcissistic. Cell division rather than birth.”

考虑到夸利正是摩尔女儿的年纪（事实上，摩尔曾在1985年的《七个毕业生》中和夸利的妈妈安迪·麦克道威尔一起，饰演一对二十多岁的漂亮女孩），母性是一个潜在主题吗？“当然，这和分娩有相似之处。从某些方面来说，这部电影是关于我们人类不想死去的欲望的。这就是为什么我们害怕变老、害怕不再被看见，因为这是死亡的隐喻。这人类是对永恒的追求。苏，对伊丽莎白来说就像一个孩子一样，使得她不全然地消失，因为她身体的某个部分仍然存在于这个世界上：她的一种延伸。从另外一个角度来说，母性是某种传递，意味着拥有更多复制品。它不是一个人关爱另一个人，它更多的与自私、自恋有关，是细胞分裂而不是生命诞生。”

Moore and Qualley’s exposed, vulnerable bodies express, Fargeat says, a vital part of the language of a film that’s light on dialogue and heavy on atmosphere: all the better to “make the audience feel what the character is feeling”. This is typical of the director’s approach to crafting her films. “I don’t really write backstories. I don’t write regular kinds of scripts regarding characters. I really start by gathering images and music and sounds… what the feelings are going to be, what the sensations are going to be. I don’t give myself any rules in advance, I don’t intellectualise them at the moment, but I follow what comes, and I know that they have a meaning, that they come for a reason.” Of course, she concedes, the pieces have to make sense together. “It’s a lot of work to kind of choose what belongs to the movie and what in the end, doesn’t. It’s a very specific balance. There are things that you can love, but that in the end you know are not going to be right. It’s an evolutionary process during the writing.”

法尔雅说，摩尔和夸利裸露的、脆弱的身体表达承担了一部对白轻、气氛重的电影语言的重要组成部分：所有这些都能更好地“让观众感受到角色的感受”。这是法尔雅打磨影片的典型手法。我不怎么写背景故事，也不写关于角色的常规剧本。我从收集画面、音乐、声音开始……这个人物将会有什么样的感觉、什么样的情绪。我不提前给自己任何限制，我不当下就把它们理性化。但我追随出现的东西，并且我知道它们有意义，它们的到来是有原因的。”当然，她也认可，这些碎片必须合在一起产生意义。“选择哪些碎片属于电影而哪些最终不属于，需要做很多工作。”这是一种确切的平衡。有些东西你很爱，但是最终你知道那是不对的。这就是写作中进化的过程。”

Fargeat, likewise, is very hands-on at the editing stage, working here with Jérôme Eltabet and Valentin Féron to craft a film that feels both tightly controlled and increasingly feverish, contrasting its hallucinogenic violence with saturated primary colours, rigid compositions and minimal sets. The score, by British composer Raffertie, lends a lo-fi 80s feel (“I wanted it to be quite innovative, to have its own identity, to be something that scratches, causes discomfort,” says Fargeat). The setting, meanwhile – Cannes was used as a location to stand in for Hollywood – mixes elements from different time periods, lending a retrofuturistic tone and suggesting that in this world, anything might happen. “I wanted to be totally free in mixing everything I wanted. That was a way for me to take this story out of reality. And to give that sensation that, yes, it could be yesterday, it could be nowadays, it could be somehow tomorrow, because I really wanted the story to feel relevant at any time. Because I think, unfortunately, it is still relevant.”

同样，法尔雅在剪辑阶段也非常亲力亲为，她与杰罗姆·埃尔塔贝（Jérôme Eltabet）和瓦伦丁·费隆（Valentin fassimron）合作，将迷幻的暴力与饱和的原色、僵硬的构图和极简的布景形成对比，制作出了一部既精细控制又越发狂热的电影。配乐由英国作曲家拉弗蒂（Raffertie）创作，给人一种80年代的低保真感觉（“我希望它很有创意，有自己的特色，让人觉得有噪波，让人不舒服”，法尔雅说。）。与此同时，电影的布景——戛纳被用来作为地标代替好莱坞——融合了不同时期的元素，给人一种复古未来主义的感觉，暗示在这个世界上，任何事情都有可能发生。“我希望完全自由地融合我想要的东西。这是我把这个故事从现实中剥离出来的一种方式。为了给人一种感觉，是的，它可能是昨天，可能是今天，也可能是明天，因为我真的想让这个故事在任何时代都能引发共鸣。不幸的是，它在今天仍然是切题的。”

The locations, too, have their own symbolic and emotional sense: the long, Lynchian corridors of the studio that seem to suck Elisabeth and Sue in; the minimalist mid-century apartment dominated by a Dorian Gray-like portrait of Elisabeth and, through its vast windows, a billboard featuring a smiling Sue. The bathroom in which the protagonist’s metamorphoses take place, a white tiled, neon-lit laboratory space, was particularly important to Fargeat. “The bathroom is the place where she judges herself, where she looks at herself in the mirror, but also where she gives birth to her new self. So it’s kind of the passage between two worlds – between the world of Elisabeth and the world of Sue. A kind of white cocoon.”

拍摄地也有自己的象征意义和情感意义：工作室里长长的林奇式走廊似乎要把伊丽莎白和苏吸进去；这是一栋世纪中叶的极简主义风格的公寓，墙上挂着一幅多里安·格雷（Dorian gray）式的伊丽莎白肖像，透过巨大的窗户，可以看到一个微笑的苏的广告牌。主人公的蜕变发生在浴室里，这是一个白色瓷砖、霓虹灯照明的实验室空间，这个空间对法尔雅来说尤为重要。“浴室是她评判自己的地方，是她照镜子的地方，也是她孕育新自我的地方。所以这是两个世界之间的通道——在伊丽莎白的世界和苏的世界之间。有点像一种白色的茧。”

It also allows for a neat wink to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) via a clever shower scene, one of countless references to genre classics, including, but by no means limited to, works by David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, Paul Verhoeven, John Carpenter, Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski. Is there a certain paradox in the fact that Fargeat’s feminist message is so heavily influenced by male filmmakers, some of whom were notoriously misogynistic? “Until a very recent time I wasn’t even aware that some of these directors could be problematic. I think it’s something that’s surfaced now that we’ve become more aware of those issues. But it’s true that I grew up watching films almost exclusively directed by men: those are the movies that shape my universe and my cinematography, and in the past that was a man’s world. But it’s also where I felt at ease.

它还通过一个巧妙的淋浴镜头向阿尔弗雷德·希区柯克的《惊魂记》（1960）致敬，它是无数类型经典作品中的一个，此外致敬对象包括但绝不限于大卫·柯南伯格、布莱恩·德·帕尔马、保罗·范霍文、约翰·卡彭特、斯坦利·库布里克和罗曼·波兰斯基的作品。法尔雅的女权主义思想深受男性电影人的影响，其中一些人是出了名的厌女，这一事实是否存在某种悖论？“直到最近，我才意识到其中一些导演是有问题的。我认为这是一些浮出水面的问题，我们已经越来越意识到这些问题。但我确实是看着几乎完全由男性导演的电影长大的：这些电影塑造了我的宇宙和我的电影制片，而在过去，这是一个完全男人的世界。但这也是我感到自在的地方。

 “I didn’t want to do what girls were supposed to: to play with dolls and Barbies and stuff like that, I wanted to play Star Wars. Even as little girls, we’re told what we should be like – and I didn’t fit. So the film is also about the representations of what you’re supposed to love, in that way. What you’re exposed to is a lot of what’s going to build who you are as a person. And the fact is that, yes, I grew up fascinated by this, let’s say, guys’ world, because I felt like it was the way to have access to so much more freedom, so much more fun than we’re allowed as women or little girls.”

我不想去做女孩们被期待的那些事情：玩洋娃娃和芭比或者类似的东西，我想要玩星球大战。即使是小女孩，我们也被告知我们应该成为什么样的人——而我不适应。所以这部电影也是关于你应该去喜欢的东西的表现。你所接触到的很多东西会塑造你。事实是，是的，我从小就被这个迷住了。比如说，男人的世界，因为我觉得这是一种获得更多自由的方式，比我们作为女人或小女孩被允许的要有趣得多。 

How does she hope her film will be received? “I think that in both this movie and Revenge, I’ve put a lot of myself – my experience of being a woman in the world in very different ways, together with very strong cinematic expression and I was very touched when I heard that women who had seen Revenge felt heard, or seen. I’d really love it if the issues that this movie has inside it are taken out from behind the curtain. Because I think the movie is really about that, about saying that behind the pearly, perfect smile and happy faces, there is a world inside that is violent, that is very problematic, and that we go through many, many things at all ages, when we have a female body in the public space.

法尔雅希望她的电影如何被观众接受？“我认为在这两部电影中，我放了很多自己进去——我在这个世界上以特别的方式做女人的经历，以及非常强烈的电影化表达。当我听说一些看过《复仇》的女孩感觉自己被听见或者被看见的时候，觉得非常感动。我真的很希望这部电影里面所探讨的问题能从幕后被揭露出来。因为我认为这部电影真正想表达的是，在珍珠般完美的微笑和幸福的面孔背后，隐藏着一个暴力世界，这是非常有问题的。当我们在公共空间拥有一个女性肉体的时候，我们在所有年龄段都要经历很多事情，

“I really hope the film will offer a way to address those issues on a bigger scale. I’ve been very honest with expressing how I feel, putting into it everything of me since I was a teenager, or even a little girl, about how you can feel with yourself, and how you can have so much pressure on yourself that is transmitted to you, to conform: to be a certain way, to look a certain way, to be considered as a good woman. Those issues are complex. They are not just black and white. So I really hope that the movie can be the start of deeper discussions and reflection about all this.

“我真的很希望这部电影能够提供一种在更大范围内解决这些问题的路径。我非常真诚地表达自己的感受，把自己完全地投入进去，从我少年时期，或者甚至还是一个小女孩的时候。这些感受是关于你如何看待你自己，你如何把这么多转嫁过来的压力放在自己身上，以此来确保：按照别人期待的方式、打扮成别人期待的样子、被确认为一个好女人。这些问题很复杂，不是非黑即白的。因此我真的希望这部电影能够成为关于这些问题更深刻讨论和反思的敲门砖。”