真相1960

人性太卑鄙，太龌龊了，看完电影《真相》的第一个感，就是恶心。无论是法官、公诉人还是律师，这些高高在上的人，他们只是一个个巨大的机器，没有情感，让人想到了电梯检修口，当一个人掉下去，就会被机器无情的卷进去并搅碎。这是个由爱生恨进而被制度彻底毁灭的故事，庭审制度及其权利机器中人性的可怕，让人想到了加缪的《局外人》，爱情及其毁灭，让人想到了《苦月亮》。演员是一代性感女神，碧姬芭铎，跑龙套的竟然是雅克贝汉。

她在陌生人面前撕心裂肺，不是为了辩白，只是为了说服所有人，包括自己，他真的爱过。如果他爱过，她便绝无独活的可能；如果他未曾爱过，她生命的支柱坍塌，便更无理由存活于世。横竖都是死。这是一部真正的关于爱与死的电影，比«巴黎野玫瑰»的小题大作强一百倍。

他在台上指挥，我和她一样屏息凝视，激动得热泪盈眶。她在小酒馆打情骂俏，轻巧地扭动着身体，那样鲜活的生命力。他们在各自的舞台熠熠生辉，这样的璀璨却是相互矛盾、永无交集的；他的古典乐让她崇拜仰视又感到无趣，她的恰恰勾起他的欲望与嫉妒。她是天涯浪荡女，地点在城市和男人之间；她只是骄傲又自由，只是敢爱又敢恨，只是对世界嗤之以鼻。

I'm sorry, I was just born this way, it dizzied you in the beginning but after a while it started to disgust you. We just didn't love at the same time. 你甚至没有爱过，只是刹那间被她的光芒击中而中暑眩晕，你在说着爱情与承诺的时候，只不过是在热病中的胡言乱语，你准备好接受这样一个你驾驭不住的随性灵魂了吗？而她在犹豫再三思前想后以后，做出了认真去爱、拥抱一切好与坏的准备。性格截然不同的两人再相爱也不应该在一起，毁灭自己的人格是比失去爱情更加悲惨的事情。

这样的审判让我想起了«复活»和«印度之行»。有点滥俗地想起那句歌词，“海鸟和鱼相爱，只是一场意外”。爱情没有逻辑，亲密关系却要找同类，橄榄树不可能生活在北方的雪原。

如果真的存在一种叫做真相的东西，那么它必然是无法认识的。所谓历史真相，大部分只是还原出历史事件的大概，更遑论意识形态宣传需要下的历史真相，充满想象建构的虚伪假象。摄影捕捉到的生活动态画面，即便能让人通过二维画面洞悉照片主人公的喜悦、忧愁，但观众很难意识到主人公复杂的心理流变过程。倘若这一生活画面的主体是一株植物，它内部进行的光合作用更难以通过摄影器材的感光元件得以呈现。真相如果是全方位的现实，那植物的光合作用也必然是植物的现实的一部分——被照片掩盖的部分。电影必须以特定视角构图、取景，纪录片并不是对历史真相的还原，而只是对导演为代表的创作者认识到的历史的还原。所谓的忠于历史，只是电影表现了一个在程度上来说更符合大家想象的历史，它可能是历史真实的一部分，也可能是完全杜撰出的历史，而后者往往更容易被大众接受为对历史真相的还原。

超乎预料的精彩。克鲁佐在这部庭审剧情中既有57年吕美特《十二怒汉》中对司法程序的反思和对谎言和真相、公平和正义的探索和界定，又有62年戈达尔《随心所欲》中新青年的情感纠葛，包括爱与被爱、忠诚与自由、清醒的自杀与伪善的活着，乃至家庭与社会对边缘群体影响力的探讨。

嵌套式的表现方式，庭审现场与随叙述再现的回忆反复切换、跳入跳出，力图通过拼图的方式展现一段事实的真相。然而当“真相”作为最有力的证据而为审判服务时，对事实“真相”的探寻变成了通过尽可能详尽的细节和尽可能理性的推理，对每个人脑海中各自构建的“真相”的探寻。

遗憾的是当“真相”发生之后便永远不会再完全一致的重现了，而所有衣冠楚楚自以为可以通过所谓的“真相”而评判他人并决定他人生命权利的人，无非是在凭借自己的想象，站在道德高地对他人进行意淫式的裁决。殊不知我们能做的只是努力去无限的靠近真相，但却永远无法抵达真正的真相。“你们想要评判爱，但却从未真正爱过”。相比一庭当事外之人的推论和猜想，对我而言，当事人遗书中所说的“他爱过我，只不过我们没有同时爱上对方”是更有说服力的“真相”。

但当生命逝去，审判结束，人去楼空，兽聚鸟散，无人再关心“真相”如何，律师投入下一场冒险继续寻找真相，“真相”也永远尘封，变成故事成为街头巷尾茶余饭后的流言和谈资。

Contrary to one’s received wisdom, Brigitte Bardot, barring her iconic curvaceous allure and bimbo vim and vigor, actually has acting chops ablaze in her, and H.G. Clouzot’s LA VERITE is an irrefutable testament.

A courtroom procedural is instituted and dramatized to get the bottom of the whys and wherefores concerning the death of a young promising music student Gilbert Tellier (Frey) at the hands of his former girlfriend Dominque Marceau (Bardot), who is hailed from a small town and instantly taken by the Left Bank’s modish atmospherics, only her liberated disposition can barely provide her for a living, when she finally caves in to Gilbert’s relentless courtship, little does she know, the balance starts to being tipped and soon she is the one being jilted with teary-eyed misery and abjection.

While the prosecuting attorney Eparvier (Meurisse, excellent as a hard-nosed, bloody-minded moralistic shyster) sets his mind to pin down the case as premeditated murder; defense attorney Guérin (a capable if underused Vanel ) counterpoises it by justifying the case is an act of passion, which could save Dominique from death penalty, but the truth (la vérité) sits vaguely between those two distinctions, it is the thorny middle ground that tests the legitimacy and equity of the legal system, and cannily the film finds a way to reach its coda without embroiling judicial verdict to the sticking point.

Splicing the ongoing procedural with chronological flashback unfolding the entanglement between Dominique and Gilbert in dribs and drabs, LA VÉRITÉ digs in its heels in giving Dominique a voice of her irrepressible fun-seeking temperament, unshackled by any moral obligation, she weaponizes her sex appeal to get what she wants but has a clear sense to distinguish between a flirtation and a relationship commitment, which only compromised by her fun-seeking caprices and mood swings, more often than not, precipitated by Gilbert’s straight-arrow, often Bach-infused jealousy.

Through Clouzot’s highly expressive modus operandi, the lowdown of this star-crossed pair’s undoing is unpicked arrestingly, the barrier between a highbrow music prodigy and a lowbrow soubrette, a Dionysian and Apollonian discrepancy thrusts in the different genders, a man falls in and out of his infatuation rather quickly, whereas a woman might like to play hard to get at first, but once her true feelings are entrenched, there is no way back.

A 25-year-old Bardot is a bona-fide barn-burner in the acme of her career and youth, Dominique is a full-blown character that twins Bardot’s irresistible magnetism with a defiant pervasion of vulnerability, despair and pathos, and Bardot holds it on her own from the stem to the stern without slackening. Also shining brightly is a young Sami Frey, whose callous about-face is so chilling and explosive that remarkably sustains a drastic contrast to his prior handsome shyness.

Finally, a sagacious advice from this exceedingly entertaining and truth-revealing Gallic crime-drama: always stick to your type when you choose the other half, it is safer and much wiser to handle the devil you know, than those you don’t.

referential entries: Clouzot’s DIABOLIQUE (1955, 9.2/10); LE CORBEAU (1943, 7.1/10).