吞咽

女主很漂亮，演技也不错。这个片子里除了女主就没一个好人，导演就是想表达人性的冷漠。有些评论说女主闲得慌，拜托，人家是有精神病，精神病不是闲出来的，是从小的环境日积月累影响的，像这种有精神疾病的人，最需要的就是关爱，女主感受到了吗？你看她接触的人，从她的丈夫，还有公公婆婆，哪个真正关心过她，女主需要陪伴，需要真正的关心，她的家人没有给她，女主丈夫和婆婆常说的就是，我们不可能24小时陪着你，这是关心吗？你们那么有钱怎么就不能24小时陪着她了？真关心她，希望女主好起来，总有办法陪伴的。其实她的丈夫就把她当做性爱娃娃，花瓶。她和她婆婆公公吃饭，没人在乎她说什么，也没人在乎她过去的故事。她婆婆跟她聊天，说什么你真幸运遇到了她儿子，她婆婆觉得她过去的生活很垃圾，其实人家以前挺自立的，明显有钱人高高在上瞧不起普通老百姓的样子。由于女主身世问题，女主从小就怕给别人添麻烦，一直战战兢兢的生活，她说她母亲养父对她很好，可是当女主给她母亲打电话想回去住的时候，她母亲说家里没地方，那是真对她好吗？只是女主的一厢情愿而已。还有那个护工，一副冷漠脸，也不跟她交流，整天被这样的人跟着，换谁都不舒服，还有那个汽车旅馆打扫卫生的女工，也是冷漠脸，哪有那么敲客人房门的？好在女主最后做出了抗争，找她生父，是她对过去的自己做个了断，最后流掉孩子，寻找新的生活，说明女主没有放弃生活的希望。片子整体很值得回味，影片营造的压抑氛围也很好，最后的长镜头看得人心情马上随着歌曲舒畅多了。

Two 2019 feature debuts from aspiring filmmakers that hold fast our zeitgeist by putting a female character in the dead center. Kitty Green’s THE ASSISTANT is exclusively lensed from our titular heroine’s perspective to cast a startling light on a salient social issue in the wake of the notorious Weinstein effect; meanwhile, Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ SWALLOW, doggedly builds up a reductive dissection of a young, gravid bride’s eerie disintegration, by dint of uncomfortable body horror tropes to reify her pica affliction.

Adhering to her technique developed as a documentarian, Green adopts an uncharacteristic angle to tackle her unsavory subject matter. In THE ASSISTANT, Garner plays Jane, a junior assistant in an unspecified NYC film production company, and the film takes place during her overlong working hours on a hectic Monday. We watch her being picked up by a limousine to work long before daybreak, and follow her in clerical drudgery, see the big shots from her peripheral vision and hear things only within her earshot. By doing that, Green risks narrative clarity and leaves the scandalous skinny in connotation or off-screen, consequently the film rather invites an immediate revisit to suss the implications of every casual dialogue and throwaway joke, and for better to piece together what is going on.

Green’s strategy, not audience-friendly, but totally chimes in with Jane’s grunt-level existence in the company, but felicitously, do we really need to see those sordid goings-on with our own eyes? We shall all be thankful to Green for being so considerate in her approach, because such a canker, condoned systemically by the industry and beyond is better limned as this immaterial, omnipresent force of vileness, penetrating every couch and behind every closed doors in every office and hotel room, it is everywhere therefore it must be put paid to.

Carrying the entire film on her slender shoulders, Garner exhibits strenuous stamina and restrained body language as the doormat (Jane is a sponge absorbent of the negative outpourings of the boss’ wife) and the dogsbody (she is virtually invisible in front of her superiors and other colleagues), even the two male assistants callously exploit her newness (only being there for 5 weeks), or maybe also because she is a she, and let her bear the brunt of blame and verbal abuse. Yet, in her position, she has no right to say otherwise.

Jane aspires to be a producer, and she knows all too well that she must pay her dues and turn a blind eye on the seedy matters, if she wants to make it. But on the off chance when that actually happens, she will have already become one of the silent connivers in that toxic working environment (implied by the unseen boss’s sinister motivation). Moreover, she should considered herself lucky, according to the head of Human Resources (Macfadyen), simply because “you are not his type”, it’s all so reassuring! Macfadyen has that peculiar air of faux-earnestness, mixed with veiled hubris, to express the warped normalcy as if it is the most commonplace words to utter, whereas Garner is so utterly disconcerted and anguished in her botched worm-will-turn rebel, their exchange is the crescendo of this gritty film.

Incredibly, THE ASSISTANT plays up the working place’s drabness, impersonality and functional symmetry to keep us absorbed with its coded message. However, SWALLOW is so stunning on the eye level, the young couple, Hunter and Richie Conrad (Bennett and Stowell) are gorgeous, their affluent, minimalistic upstate NYC residence with a killer view, is often filtered through prismatic hues to emphasize the magic power of money.

But what happens inside is far less majestic, Hunter, hailed from a lower class, is maladaptive to her new ascendancy as the cinderella, who has a bun in the oven and develops an anomalous appetite for inedible things (including some small sharp objects, those swallow scenes are fastidiously arranged, and not for the squeamish). Does she subconsciously want to lose the baby? and why is that? A thought never occurs to our prince charm Richie, instead, his family hires a burly minder Luay (Nakli), a Syrian immigrant, to keep an eye on her minute by minute to forestall any self-inflict harm, solely for the safety of their precious progeny.

If the plot is piled up with unmitigated clichés (cruel, senseless rich people, good-hearted immigrants, a fable of perfect family of origin, the psychological manipulation of negging and nonpology, the list goes on and on…) and Mirabella-Davis might be a lousy fabulist, what gives vitality to SWALLOW, besides Katelin Arizmendi’s stylish cinematography, is Bennett’s metamorphic performance. A frail flower distressed by her parentage (the cat will be let out of the bag later) and conjugal negligence, Bennett, who looks like a poor girl’s Jennifer Lawrence, grandly inhabits Hunter’s compulsion, disorientation and exasperation with such astonishing finesses, one cannot take eyes off her. Even when we cannot relate to Hunter’s weird condition, we are compulsively intrigued by Bennett’s nuanced delivery and delicate mannerism, hoping some deus ex machina can materialize to save her.

Eventually, Mirabella-Davis grants Hunter a touching closure (Denis O’Hare’s brilliant cameo is exactly what the doctor ordered, he can proficiently pull off a complicated emotional range in meager minutes, though on paper, the reconciliation is still a mawkish cliché) and the final shot statically looking at a lady’s room with people come and go writ large the film's emboldened stance: pro-life and pro-woman.

When all is said and done, both THE ASSISTANT and SWALLOW are promising works well wrought by their emergent creators, together, they paint a vivid picture of the wrongs (in the working place or in one’s own home) inflicted upon women by faulty, haughty, selfish men, but they are not just reproachful to the stronger sex, their artistry underlies more hope in women’s resilience, Jane might walk the plank the next day, she can at least have peace with herself and knows better of her goals, as for Hunter, starts anew and puts aside a failed marriage, together with her psychogenic malady, scrumptious comestibles are beckoning and cinderella can get stuffed!

referential entries: Darren Aronofsky’s MOTHER! (2017, 6.6/10); Cory Finley’s THOROUGHBRED (2017, 6.5/10); Leigh Whannell’s THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020, 6.9/10).

Title: The Assistant

Year: 2019

Country: USA

Language: English, Mandarin

Genre: Drama

Director/Screenwriter: Kitty Green

Music: Tamar-kali

Cinematography: Michael Latham

Editing: Kitty Green, Blair McClendon

Cast:

Julia Garner

Matthew Macfadyen

Noah Robbins

Jon Orsini

Kristine Froseth

Dagmara Dominczyk

Alexander Chaplin

Purva Bedi

Juliana Canfield

Makenzie Leigh

Patrick Wilson

Rating: 7.4/10

Title: Swallow

Year: 2019

Country: USA, France

Language: English, Arabic

Genre: Drama, Mystery

Director/Screenwriter: Carlo Mirabella-Davis

Music: Nathan Halpern

Cinematography: Katelin Arizmendi

Editing: Joe Murphy

Cast:

Haley Bennett

Austin Stowell

Elizabeth Marvel

David Rasche

Denis O’Hare

Luna Lauren Velez

Laith Nakli

Babak Tafti

Zabryna Guevara

Rating: 6.9/10

平凡人嫁入豪門，對著奢華大宅獨自過著乏味的生活，嘗試突破舒適區每日嘗試一件新鮮事，她卻想到生吞危險物品。電影拋出高概念綽頭，女主角吞嚥的鏡頭拍出心驚膽戰的感覺，當中一鏡到底的吞嚥鏡頭配上背景小孩呢喃聲音，刻劃震撼的恐懼感，視聽語言精準擴張女主角面對陌生環境、全新身份的孤獨與壓抑感，試圖合理化女主角產生怪癖的理由。

實質上故事遊走於女性主義被踐踏與抬頭之間，長期處於失語狀態的女主角不僅無法踏入上流階層，亦因角色轉換而喪失原有的身份，疲勞奔波的丈夫下班後寧願滑動電話不願多聊幾句，對女主角提出種花的要求敷衍帶過，對於公公婆婆的認知接近為零，電影刻意留白男女主角的背景，意圖放大女主角的渾然不知狀態建構觀眾共情。

故事早半段視點落於女主角陷入身份認同與失語的焦慮及孤獨，確診患上異食症後丈夫一家人對女主角判若兩人的態度，亦正正凸顯他們得悉女主角出事後才亡羊補牢，其實更著緊她肚中的嬰兒，然而故事落到女主角嘗試掙扎，拆開女主角不為人知的秘密，背後引出的故事老套而無趣，而兩個部分無法形成有機融合。

《吞上癮》講述年輕貌美的杏特擁有令人羨慕的生活：住豪宅、坐名車、嫁靚仔富二代。本來婚後極速懷孕理應高興，杏特卻發生令人難以理解的變化，患上病態癖好：吞食各種危險物品，愈鋒利愈難吞就愈興奮愈上癮。即使家人發現後嚴格控管，杏特變本加厲陷入失控的慾望黑洞，逐步親手摧毀了美滿的生活，更迫使她吞上癮後，吐出不願面對的真相……

女主角長期被撇除於富裕家庭之外，片初四人同檯享用晚宴，男主角要求女主角敘說童年故事，說到一半突然被公公支開話題，及後三人儼然形成小圈子排開女主角，無法加入他們的對話，此處亦相當巧妙地分開女主角、男主角以及公公婆婆三組鏡頭，透過大量女主角的個人鏡頭加強壓抑感，呈現失語狀態，女主角被迫吞下冰塊表達不滿，宣洩主權，使他們重新把視點聚焦回自己身上，發現湊效後展開吞嚥之旅。

其中有一段情節相當有趣，男主角在家舉辦派對，男主角連同工作夥伴們在泳池邊閒談，以玻璃幕門架開了男主角及女主角的世界，男主角的同事進入室內空間，儼然闖進女主角的小天地，苛求一個擁抱，躊躇不前的女主角聽到他緩緩拋出一句「我很孤獨」，女主角決意擁抱他，彷彿兩顆孤獨的弱小心靈終於找到歸屬，暗示女主角的生世為後續留下伏筆。

***************以下有輕量劇透***************

確診異食症後，女主角突然獲得家人無微不至的照料，某程度導致女主角誤解要透過如斯方式才獲得關注，與此同時丈夫的掌控越來越激烈，甚至欲將她送去精神病院，陷入身份、階層矛盾的女主角嘗試掙扎逃離被掌控的魔掌，開展第二段故事，才發現導致女主角患病的原因，除了無法加入全新階層地位，呈現失語狀態，原生家庭的陰影亦扭曲女主角的性格。

其父母親顯然不想認領女主角，加入豪門後母親彷如放下了包袱，母親潛意識中認為女主角來到地球是場意外，而女主角的存在會勾起母親慘痛的回憶，最後女主角尋回親生父親進行自我救贖。利用父母的背景解讀女主角的行為動機無趣，站不住腳，早段只字未提父權問題，單憑女主角的行為動機，未能妥善連結彼此關係。

《吞上癮》憑藉豐富的視聽語言烘托出異樣的驚慄氣氛，抓緊觀眾的注意力，而事先張揚的吞嚥鏡頭恰到好處，沒有偏移故事的方向，女主角Haley Bennett成功演活角色的怪異，尤其是一鏡到底的吞嚥鏡頭幾個心境的切換自如順暢，但故事結局的處理較為潦草。

关于女人与家宅，没有比《让娜·迪尔曼》更好的颂歌了。在阿克曼的镜头里，迪尔曼每天重复同样的事情，她丝毫不感到厌倦。不妨说，她乐在其中。操持家庭，与其说是女人的职责，不如说是天分。她们为家而生。

在杜拉斯的笔下，家由女人维系着。“由女人创造出来供人安居其中的家屋，这就是所谓乌托邦的所在”。她发出感慨：“女人就是家。她过去是，现在仍然是。”虽然这一直是“一种深受限制难以忍受的情况下踏在死亡的绳索上跳舞”。（《物质生活》）

现在，我们见证越来越多的女人逃离家庭。不为工作，仅仅因为家成了囚牢。她们仍然爱家，并视其为履行妻子与母亲的责任所在。但随着现代化的进程，一场隐形的精神危机正在中产阶级家庭主妇身上发生。

危险早已悄然埋伏在冰冷的现代主义建筑中，精准的自动化操作在减少女性在家宅中劳作的同时，也逐渐取消了家宅之于她们的意义。倘若这还属于其次，那么更为严重的则是日复一日酿造的厌倦与无聊。

如果说因为天性，两性之间的相处终归会转入平淡，家宅及其自身具有的情感意义才是让女人安居家中的动力所在，那么一旦这层意义被取消，家宅就会变成禁锢天性的规训之地：男人把女人监禁在了家中。

卡罗尔（《安然无恙》）不会想到发生在自己身上的诡异症状——流鼻血、眩晕、无法呼吸……——乃是由家宅引起。她有一个公认的“幸福”家庭：住在美国郊外的豪宅中，家庭美满，衣食无忧。但问题就在这儿，现代社会为中产阶级贡献了隐形弃妇。

亨特（《吞咽》）与卡罗尔有类似的家庭，原因应该为人所羡慕。但慢慢地，她发现自己患上了一种奇怪的疾病：她会经常抑制不住自己吞食异物，并从中得到快感。医学上称此为“异食症”。

两位女性的致病因被不约而同地归结于外部世界。卡罗尔面对一个被化学分子污染的世界，最后她被送去一家与世隔绝的疗养院修养；亨特是因为她的原生家庭——她是母亲被父亲强奸后产生的罪证。

但显然，求助于外因一方面出于对观众理解力的讨巧，另一方面男导演似乎在潜意识中回避了女性的精神病症正是由他们所属的性别导致。被“禁锢”在家的贵妇面对着无止境的空虚，自我价值的无法得到实现。

家宅于是变成了一处精神病院。这可不是揭示什么深层现状，而是现实本身。卡罗尔和亨特均听从家庭成员的建议，接受治疗。但也有另外一种出路——选择逃离。

这不再是“娜拉出走”的故事，而是卷土重来。艾米（《消失的爱人》）为失败的婚姻策划了精心的报复：制造一场失踪案，通过留下蛛丝马迹让丈夫的行径暴露于公众，从而进行一场变相的“情感教育”。结果，她不仅制服了丈夫，而且“荣归”旧宅。

丝莉亚（《隐形人》）因为不堪忍受男友的虐待同样逃离了家宅，她继续面临着男友致命的报复和精神虐待。她以妥协的姿态回到了家宅，不过暗中，设计计谋让男友毙命（电影中未能解释明白的点）并抽身而退，从而获得胜利。

“过去的情况就是这样。过去，不论我站在哪一方，不论处在世界历史哪一个世纪，我所见到的女人无不是处在一种深受限制难以忍受的情况下踏在死亡的绳索上跳舞。”忍受，还是反抗？是摆在当代女性面前的难题。

不幸的身世使得Hunt一直在寻找我是谁，认定我是被社会抛弃的孩子。遇到了“完美”先生所获得的一切，劝解自己“我应该很幸福”，但这样的生活越发使得她脱离安全感，如何使得丈夫爱她，如何不犯错，强大的自卑和缺乏安全感折磨着她。直到发现了“吞咽异物”所带来的安全感，当冰冷尖锐的金属触碰舌头时带来的强大结合感，让她瞬时感受到“被拥抱”“真实存在感”以及隐含的“无所不能”，以及“控制欲”。那一瞬的快感让她保持一天很好的自我存在感和安全感。最后在与生父的探讨“找寻自我”中真正地释放了自己。有人批评了最后女厕所的镜头，我却觉得非常好，最后她还是回到了属于她的世界，一个平凡的阶层，一个并没有那么体面的场合，她只是芸芸众生中不起眼的女孩。

爱情的选择不一定是婚姻。有时自由才是。

你吞咽了世俗的婚姻，也许就吞不下世俗的孤独。风景再美，内心荒芜。橱窗再大，内心憔悴。

你吞的下稀奇古怪的一切，却咽不下一成不变的漠视。填不满的是寂寞。有时爱人不如花园里的泥土。

那些曾经在乎你的说法，不过是他人成功路上的获奖感言。满堂溢满赞许的，未必是对你投来的目光。

女人啊，其实你生来就孤独。怎么才能找到自我救赎出路。