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)

Mille Plateaux: YEAR ZERO: FACIALITY

Faces are not basically individual; they define zones of

frequency or probability, delimit a field that neutralizes in advance any

expressions or connections unamenable to the appropriate significations.

Similarly, the form of subjectivity, whether consciousness or passion,

would remain absolutely empty if faces did not form loci of resonance that

select the sensed or mental reality and make it conform in advance to a

dominant reality. The face itself is redundancy. It is itself in redundancy

with the redundancies of signifiance or frequency, and those of resonance

or subjectivity. The face constructs the wall that the signifier needs in order

to bounce off of; it constitutes the wall of the signifier, the frame or screen.

The face digs the hole that subjectification needs in order to break through;

it constitutes the black hole of subjectivity as consciousness or passion, the

camera, the third eye.

《面孔》是卡萨维蒂继《影子》之后的又一艺术性高峰，但是与前者给我带来的爽快观感不同，《面孔》的后半段观影过程堪称折磨，虽然其叙事和结构的确富有艺术性与新意，但是主题的单调性和高度重复化风格化的特写确实在一个小时后将我带入了疲惫的深渊。与众多影评人对这部影片给出的高分不同，笔者认为其对立结构缺乏密度和深度，并且在人物个像和群像之间并未求得较好的平衡（这个问题在弗朗西斯瓦·欧容的新作《感谢上帝》中有更加突出的体现，到时继续做更加详细的讨论），因此算不上是完全的佳作。 该电影的结构可以被宏观上剖析成一个联结的崩塌，对于婚姻不满的男方女方分别外出寻欢，并在这一夜与其他人相遇相知相“爱”。整个电影基于一个夜晚所发生的一切，这对于一个长达两小时有余的影片来说是一个过于充分的叙事空间了，然而卡萨维蒂并未像他后来如《爱的激流》或者《女煞葛洛蒂》一样安排交织的故事和空间，只是将摄像机无数次的对准演员，他们的神情动作，所有的姿态被他分解和观察，并通过两位主角与其他角色的沟通来继续投射。这个方式本身在笔者看来出现了令人困惑的非一致性，男主理查德和商人们与他的风流对象采取了过度风格化的（又名：喝了酒的卡萨维蒂）影响调度，快速切换的镜头，过度嘈杂的笑声等等（当然这个观影体验可能是上海影城在放映单声轨电影时的通病）。理查德在这个部分的表现是主动而外显的，俨然为一名参与者。而相对的在女主玛丽带酒吧男孩回家派对后，她始终未有进一步的行动，而是以一名偶尔做出费解表情的观察者去注意她姐妹们的行径。笔者只能从卡萨维蒂的固有男性视角来理解这样的身份不一致。

《面孔》可以是卡萨维蒂对于他所钟情的宏观意义上的爱情主题中婚姻和性所进行的二维探讨，理查德代表的性和玛丽代表的婚姻在一夜的混沌之后走向了沉默的统一。但是其内核的反复性配上低反差的黑白影像让笔者不断地想起伯格曼的《婚姻生活》，虽然两者确实相差甚远，但同样略显枯燥。 当然，《面孔》有着无与伦比的室内调度和特写，虽然广度尚欠，但是其对于一种外放性的视觉表达：表情 做出了深刻的探讨。卡萨维蒂不畏惧夸张的手法来彰显连绵不断的习惯性的谎言，和迅速转变的表情一起所被描写的同样是不断起伏而挣扎的内心。We are all making fool of ourselves. 结尾与楼梯上位置的互换，是一种生活态度上的切换，还是单纯位置上的扭曲。

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。