未来的回忆1992
森田芳光执导的东宝公司60周年特别作,原作为《机器猫》的作者藤子不二雄,是一个类似《回到未来》的故事,获得1993年日本电影学院奖最佳音效奖。影片讲述漫画家纳户游子和从普通上班族变成平凡家庭主妇的金江银子,带着现在的记忆转生回10年前,两人利用未来的“记忆",在工作、恋爱、金钱等各方面随心所欲、如鱼得水。影片中两位女主角是木村拓哉的老婆工藤静香和《赤桥下的暖流》中的清水美砂,另外还有藤子不二雄等多位漫画家以及唐泽寿明、铃木京香等大明星的客串,片尾曲则是威猛乐队的名曲“Last Christmas",温馨感人。      这部影片引人注目点是在剧本原作上。藤子·F·不二雄,一提《机器猫》大家可能立即恍然大悟。创造了那个日本漫画史上最受欢迎的形象的人,是一个头脑中充满着瑰奇想象的作者,这部开创“昨日重来”之风的影片,便是根据他的漫画作品所改变。   也许因为剧本的写作者是漫画作者,两位关键女性中的一位:纳户游子的身份也正是一个漫画家。在她“正常”的人生中,她是一个事业、爱情上皆不得志的女性,十年前曾有一次作品出版的机会,却因地震引起堵车而在与编辑见面时迟到,因此失去连载机会。十年后的圣诞节那天,她与陌生算命女子一见如故,次日身亡,却不料命运就此偏离了轨迹,她如一梦醒来,竟然发现自己回到十年前。   这部可称此类作品“开山鼻祖”的作品,为日后的模仿或超越之作提供了原形,同时定下了“昨日重来”的类型片的几个规则:   ·情人只是配角,一起转转才是同伴   ·“未来的记忆”可能带来名利,却不会带来真正的幸福。   游子在第一次“重生”中,选择将他人的漫画先行画出,却发现那样并不能真正达成自己的愿望。她终于明白抄别人的漫画还是不行,只有自己的才能永恒拥有,在最后的那次选择中,她画出“自己真正想画的漫画”——也许这正是作者藤子·F·不二雄的希望和心声啊!   除了主演清水美砂和工藤静香外,“被盗窃的漫画作者们”如高桥留美子小姐,都在片中客串他们本人,也算相当有趣的特色。
四重奏
It has been said that most great twentieth century novels include scenes in a hotel, a symptom of the vast uprooting that has occurred in the last century: James Ivory begins Quartet with a montage of the hotels of Montparnasse, a quiet prelude before our introduction to the violently lost souls who inhabit them.   Adapted from the 1928 autobiographical novel by Jean Rhys, Quartet is the story of a love quadrangle between a complicated young West Indian woman named Marya (played by Isabelle Adjani), her husband Stefan (Anthony Higgins), a manipulative English art patron named Heidler (Alan Bates), and his painter wife Lois (Maggie Smith). The film is set in the Golden Age of Paris, Hemingway's "moveable feast" of cafe culture and extravagant nightlife, glitter and literati: yet underneath is the outline of something sinister beneath the polished brasses and brasseries.   When Marya's husband is put in a Paris prison on charges of selling stolen art works, she is left indigent and is taken in by Heidler and his wife: the predatory Englishman (whose character Rhys bases on the novelist Ford Madox Ford) is quick to take advantage of the new living arrangement, and Marya finds herself in a stranglehold between husband and wife. Lovers alternately gravitate toward and are repelled by each other, now professing their love, now confessing their brutal indifference -- all the while keeping up appearances. The film explores the vast territory between the "nice" and the "good," between outward refinement and inner darkness: after one violent episode, Lois asks Marya not to speak of it to the Paris crowd. "Is that all you're worried about?" demands an outraged Marya. "Yes," Lois replies with icy candor, "as a matter of fact."   Adjani won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her performances in Quartet: her Marya is a volatile compound of French schoolgirl and scorned mistress, veering between tremulous joy and hysterical outburst. Smith shines in one of her most memorable roles: she imbues Lois with a Katherine-of-Aragon impotent rage, as humiliated as she is powerless in the face of her husband's choices. Her interactions with Bates are scenes from a marriage that has moved from disillusionment to pale acceptance.   Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and James Ivory's screenplay uses Rhys's novel as a foundation from which it constructs a world that is both true to the novel and distinctive in its own right, painting a society that has lost its inhibitions and inadvertently lost its soul. We are taken to mirrored cafes, then move through the looking glass: Marya, in one scene, is offered a job as a model and then finds herself in a sadomasochistic pornographer's studio. The film, as photographed by Pierre Lhomme, creates thoroughly cinematic moments that Rhy's novel could not have attempted: in one of the Ivory's most memorable scenes, a black American chanteuse (extraordinarily played by Armelia McQueen) entertains Parisian patrons with a big and brassy jazz song, neither subtle nor elegant. Ivory keeps the camera on the singer's act: there is something in her unguarded smile that makes the danger beneath Montparnasse manners seem more acute.
*
*