斯嘉麗約翰遜在《超體》變身超女

Thank goodness (or the goddess) for male directors who dig strong female characters. Whatever their reasons, these directors often expand the range of roles women play, whether it’s one of Howard Hawks’s dames calling the shots or one of James Cameron’s. That the French director Luc Besson, an industrious multi-hyphenate, has a thing for femmes fortes has been evident since 1990, when he unleashed a pouty toothpick in “La Femme Nikita,” a delirious, violent fantasy that turned an outlaw into a gun-toting gamine and an exploitable commodity that, in turn, spawned both an American big-screen remake (“Point of No Return”) and a television series.

感謝那些致力於挖掘強悍女性角色的男導演們（或者應該謝謝女神）。不管他們是出於什麼動機，通常都拓展了女性角色的範疇，霍華德·霍克斯(Howard Hawks)和詹姆斯·卡梅隆(James Cameron)的影片裏都有掌控一切的女性。勤奮而多才多藝的法國導演呂克·貝鬆(Luc Besson)對強勢女人的迷戀則是從1990年的《尼基塔女郎》(La Femme Nikita)裏那個乾瘦如牙籤、愛生氣的女主角就可以看出來了，它是一個瘋狂暴力的幻想，講述一個不法之徒搖身一變，成爲身背槍支的豔女和可供利用的商品，後來它在美國被翻拍爲電影《尼基塔：永不回頭》(Point of No Return)，又被改編爲電視劇。

Mr. Besson’s particular kink for fatal female beauties receives an entertaining workout in his latest film, “Lucy,” in which he again introduces a young woman who undergoes a remarkable metamorphosis that leads to convulsions of extreme violence and an increasingly frenzied visual style that lay waste to both men and any semblance of story sense. The nonsense begins when the title character — played by the improbable yet somehow perfect Scarlett Johansson — is pulled into a head-scratching plot in Taiwan, put into motion by a crime boss, Mr. Jang (the excellent South Korean actor Choi Min Sik). He’s set to begin peddling an experimental recreational drug that she accidentally ingests, and in such enormous quantities that she’s soon transformed from a slacking expat into super-Scarlett.

貝鬆對致命美女的奇想在他的新片《超體》(Lucy)中得到了有趣的體現，片中他再次推出一個經歷重大變形的年輕女子，導致了極度暴力的動亂，也帶來愈發瘋狂的視覺風格，不僅破壞了片中的男人，也破壞了故事的外觀。女主角露西由雖不太可信，但在某種程度上非常完美的斯嘉麗·約翰遜(Scarlett Johansson)飾演，她被捲入臺灣一樁棘手的陰謀，由犯罪團伙頭目江先生（Jang，韓國演員崔岷植精彩出演）策劃，胡言亂語就從這裏開始了。江計劃走私一種試驗中的娛樂毒品，露西不小心吞下了很多，結果很快從一個懶散的外國人變成了“超級斯嘉麗”。

Ms. Johansson’s rise as a major star is largely interesting because of its familiar reflexivity. Over a career that began in childhood — something that she shares with Elizabeth Taylor, along with sexual expressivity — she has taken on her share of unexceptional girls and women, but as her fame has increased, it’s become difficult for her to convey normality persuasively. Even when she has played more stock roles, she radiates extraordinariness, whether as a lust object in “Don Jon” or a dangerous agent in Marvel’s “Avengers” series. More unusual is her disembodied turn as a computer program in “Her” and her fleshed-out performance as a man-baiting, clothes-dropping E.T. in “Under the Skin,” both expressive of elusive, tantalizing, otherworldly stardom itself.

約翰遜成爲巨星的經歷非常有趣，因爲這個過程有着人們所熟悉的自反性。她和伊麗莎白·泰勒(Elizabeth Taylor)一樣，從童年時代就開始了帶有性感魅力的演藝生涯，她演過平凡的女孩和女人，但是隨着名聲開始增長，她就愈來愈難以將“平凡”演繹得真實可信了，雖然她演過很多陳舊的角色，但也煥發出非凡的光彩，從《唐璜》(Don Jon)中的慾望對象到《復仇者聯盟》(Avengers)系列中的危險特工都是如此。 更加不同尋常的是，她在《她》(Her)中出演沒有實體的電腦程序，在《皮囊之下》(Under the Skin)中出演誘惑男人的美女，脫下皮囊就成了外星人，兩個角色都表現出她難以琢磨而又充滿誘惑，彷彿超越現實世界的明星氣質。

Given this, “Lucy” can’t help registering as the latest brush stroke in Ms. Johansson’s emerging portrait. The movie opens with her character — cheerfully frowzy, with swinging earrings, teetering heels and the telltale cheap cat-print adornment — arguing with a shady type, who turns out to be a new fling. They’re just two little people dwarfed by the surrounding towers of power, one of which is soon splattered with blood and carpeted with shattered glass and bullet casings. Mr. Besson isn’t a director who likes the slow boil: One minute, Lucy is a good-time gal unencumbered by a pesky back story (history and psychology aren’t essential elements in his auteurist arsenal); the next, she’s embroiled in an intrigue that goes from Asia to far-outsville.

因此，《超體》爲約翰遜正在崛起的形象添上了最後的筆觸。影片以她飾演的人物開始，那是個歡快而又邋遢的女郎，耳環搖搖蕩蕩，穿着高跟鞋，印着貓咪的廉價裝飾品頗爲說明問題，她正和一個頗爲可疑的人吵架，後來他成了她新的一段風流韻事。他們只不過是兩個小人物，在周圍象徵權力的高樓映襯之下更加渺小，後來一個人很快弄出了流血、碎玻璃一地和槍戰的場面。貝鬆不是那種喜歡慢慢醞釀的導演：一分鐘前，露西還是個好姑娘，沒有什麼麻煩的背景故事（歷史和心理狀態不是貝鬆經常使用的工具）；下一分鐘，她就捲入了一個從亞洲直到非常遙遠的地方的大陰謀。

Fueling this trip is the drug that, Lucy discovers after a blackout, has been surgically embedded in her tummy. Along with a handful of disposable types whose fates are sealed by their flop sweat and forgettable faces, she has been forcibly recruited as a drug mule. None of it makes much sense, but then Mr. Besson has never been one for narrative logic, being a bigger believer in the distractions of fast cuts, ping-ponging camera moves and spectacular bloodshed that sweep you up and away. He’s also good at casting, and Mr. Choi and Ms. Johansson are fun to watch as the action cranks up, and the drug leaks into Lucy’s system. It’s then that the movie goes from hyper to hyperkinetic: Suddenly she’s climbing the walls and scampering across the ceiling and into freedom, having tapped into newfound eerie powers. Yeah, the chase is on.

火上澆油的是，一次暈倒之後，露西發現那種毒品以外科手術方式被植入了她的胃裏。她和其他幾個可以被隨便拋棄的角色（滿頭大汗和讓人記不住的面孔決定了他們的命運）一起被毒販子強行招募進來。這一切都沒有什麼意義，但貝鬆絕不是一個遵循敘事邏輯的人，他更喜歡用快速剪輯和來回切換的鏡頭運動來讓你分心，還有讓你震驚的流血大場面。他也擅長挑選演員。崔岷植和約翰遜都很精彩，情節越來越快，毒品滲入到了露西的身體系統裏。之後影片就從興奮走向了亢奮：突然，她爬過牆壁，驚惶地穿過天花板，利用這種新獲得的古怪力量獲得了自由。耶，追捕開始了。

In between bullets and brawls, Mr. Besson throws out a lot to explain Lucy’s transformation, including reams of on-screen text and one Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman). Mr. Freeman may have taken a break from playing God, but his character is another gloss on his familiar role as the resident kindly father figure who, until the story goes haywire, shepherds the younger co-star and the audience both. Specifically, Norman has charted the brain power of humankind that explains what’s happening to Lucy. (Seriously, he uses charts to explain his ideas to an audience that’s a stand-in for us.) Lucy seeks him out, having realized that her rapidly escalating physical supremacy is part of a one-woman human potential movement that’s leading her into total awesomeness. She aches just like a woman (well, at first), but breaks like a god.

在子彈與鬥毆之間，貝鬆還拋出了很多關於露西變形的解釋，包括大量字幕和一位諾曼教授（Professor Norman，摩根·弗里曼[Morgan Freeman]飾演）的解釋。弗里曼可能是在扮演上帝的間隙來休個假，但他飾演的無非又是一個令人熟悉的角色：一直以來的善良父親形象，等故事開始失控的時候，就像牧羊人一樣指引年輕的明星和觀衆們。諾曼特別談起人類大腦的力量，揭示了露西身上所發生的事（他使用圖表，對着片中代表我們的一羣觀衆嚴肅地解釋自己的理念）。露西找到他，意識到自己不斷增加的身體力量也是一個女人探索人類潛能運動的一部分，這徹底令她變得讓人敬畏。她疼痛時像個女人（一開始是這樣），但崩潰時像是神祇。

Buoyed by Ms. Johansson’s presence, Mr. Besson keeps his entertainment machine purring. He may be a hack, but he’s also a reliable entertainer, even when he’s recycling other directors’ ideas (a pinch of David Fincher here, a dash of Christopher Nolan there), or giddily engaging in slaughter and racist stereotypes. This is, after all, a movie that, stripped of its gimmick, comes down to a white woman being chased by hordes of Asian men. Mr. Besson’s thoughtlessness in this regard reaches an early nadir when Lucy shoots a Taiwanese man, nominally because he doesn’t speak English — a death that’s played for laughs. The scene’s vulgarity recalls Indiana Jones’s jokily shooting a sword-wielding Arab in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” proving yet again that what looks new in Mr. Besson’s work is invariably old.

約翰遜的表演令人振奮，貝鬆讓他的娛樂機器一直轟鳴作響。他或許有些粗製濫造，但他也是個可靠的娛樂提供者，甚至回收利用其他導演的創意（這兒有一點大衛·芬奇[David Fincher]，那兒有一點克里斯托弗·諾蘭[Christopher Nolan]），或者輕浮地拍攝屠殺和種族主義刻板印象時也是如此。去掉噱頭，這畢竟只是一部關於一個白種女人被大羣亞洲男人追趕的故事。在影片早期一個陰暗的時刻，露西開槍射殺一個臺灣男人，主要是因爲他不說英語，他的死主要是爲了逗樂，這反映出貝鬆對這方面並未多加思考。這一幕的粗俗令人想起印第安納·瓊斯(Indiana Jones)在《奪寶奇兵》(Raiders of the Lost Ark)裏開玩笑地射殺一個揮劍的阿拉伯人，再次證明貝鬆電影裏看上去很新的東西其實不可避免很陳舊。