面孔

Title: Faces

Year: 1968

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Drama

Director/Writer: John Cassavetes

Music: Jack Ackerman

Cinematography: Al Ruban

Cast:

John Marley

Gena Rowlands

Lynn Carlin

Seymour Cassel

Fred Draper

Val Avery

Elizabeth Deering

Gene Darfler

Dorothy Gulliver

Joanne Moore Jordan

Darlene Conley

Rating: 8.0/10

It takes an acquired taste to be comfortably and thoroughly engaged in Cassavetes’ intensely disheartening dramaturgy of bourgeois ennui, FACES isirrefutably a feather in his cup, not in the least for its unsparing cinéma-vérité bravura, one could only imagine watching it in front of a celluloid with those intrusive, sidling über-closeups underlined by that grainy monochrome, how different would it be from anything else in the year of 1968?

Watching in on a TV screen might be a less dizzying experience and it may even lend a helping hand for the audience to become more appreciated of Cassavetes’ scalpel-like dissection of an internecine relationship tangle where no one comes off as unscathed.

The film takes the course roughly within one day, we are peering into the disintegration of a 12-year-old marriage betweenRichard Frost (Marley, who physically resembles an elder version of Cassavetes), a well-off movie financier and his younger wife Maria (Carlin), plus its immediate aftermath. What tickles the idea of divorce into Richard’s mind is another woman, Jeannie Rapp (Rowlands), a classy fille de joie who is tentative by the courtship from one of her patron, whom she might also fall for.Whilst Richard visits Jeannie in her apartment with the presence of her other clients, Maria, pent-up after receiving the bolt from the blue, hangs out with her gal pals in a club and they bring back a young go-go dancer Chet (Cassel) to find some cheap solace, but the problem is always the morning after, does she have the courage to face a new day? What else can a domesticated woman do when she is going to a cast-off?

The story pans out intimately in its interior-exclusive episodes, burnished by what dynamo of a cast, the film galvanizes our attention from A to Z, it is hard to tell whether the dialogue and play-off is semi-improvised or strictly script-based, but Cassavetes relentlessly presses home a brisk tension of fickleness and turns of moods through the lengthy procedures, two friends banter, jape, dance until one of them finds himself becomes an inconvenient third wheel and he snaps; the same coup-de-théâtre occurs almost repetitively in each episode, whether it is between Richard and Maria’s abruptly disconnected duologue, or the tangible disquiet/agitation between Jeanine and her client Jim McCarthy (Avery, a wonderful chameleon), or later the macho confrontation/reconciliation between Jim and Richard. But it is the chapter where Maria and co. facing off a woman-pleasing Chef leaves the most indelible mark, for its utterly frank expose of a lonely woman’s delusion and desperation under the influence of alcohol, the unsung hero here is Dorothy Gulliver's importunate Florence, you cannot help but feeling pity for her, but the pity is concomitant with a whiff of involuntary disgust.

The cast is pure gold, John Marley upstages the rest with hissilver fox allure so damning pungent in every line delivery and gesticulation, deceptively papers over Richard’s dark streak with a winning/poignant combo of open-facedness and bluntness, only belies his shallowness and misery in the morning after as an exasperating cuckold. Ms.Cassavetes, the unparalleled Gena Rowlands drums nuances into every pore of her body and every glance she casts (also thanks to the majestically in-your-face shots to create that stunning effect). However it is two newbies who are given some legitimate Oscar love,Lynn Carlin is stripped down to her raw emotion in her film debut, which powerfully elicits Maria’s clogged mental state and counterpoises its life-threatening after-effect; on the other hand, a blond and youthful Seymour Cassel beautifully oozes sex appeal and wide-eyed sophistication as an unexpectedly selfless symbol of savior to all those wrenched and dissatisfied housewives, his Chet is the diagonal counterpart of Rowland’s Jeanine, only in exeunt omnes, he has to rashly flee from a window whereas she might eventually get what she wants, if one wanna write about sex politics, FACES is a gold mine.

Most suitably, FACES should be ensconced as a smoldering pendant of Mike Nichols’ WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, both are hell-bent in tearing down smoke and mirrors to debunk lethargy, inaction and mythomania (among many other maladies) abound in all relationships, dare you to watch them cheek by jowl!

referential points: Cassavetes’ A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974, 7.3/10), OPENING NIGHT (1977, 8.1/10); Mike Nichols’ WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966, 8.2/10)

从伦敦Prince Charles电影院的放映厅走出来时，我下意识地顺着眼前的路，推开眼前的门，却没想到这扇门将我带回了放映厅。走上楼梯的时候我甚至差点摔倒。这部电影，连同着它所传递的悲伤，绝望，和无法逃离的困境，捆绑着我的情绪，就好像昨天那间难以逃离的放映厅。从放映厅走出来，我和朋友径直走向了离电影院最近的酒吧，一人点了一杯威士忌苏打，坐在那里彼此谁也说不出话。

《面孔》是导演与演员的天才之作。当我们将镜头推进到每一张面庞前的时候，才发现原来一个人颤抖的下巴，抿起的嘴唇，迷离的眼神，和心碎的狂笑中，能够隐藏深切的渴望，久久的隐忍，摆脱不了的迷惘和灵魂最深的痛楚。 原来其实人的情绪确实都写在脸上，只是看你敢不敢凑近。

大部分人与人之间的关系总是传递出一种悲伤。无论我们如何用力将脸贴在一起，你也无法成为我的一部分，无论此时我们如何相爱，都注定会在某个瞬间憎恨彼此，无论此时此刻如何地永恒，我们终将分离。如何在绝望与爱中，和另一个灵魂共处，是我们与人性的斗争。