四个女人的故事

戏剧表演课上，同住一个宿舍的四个女学生正在排练马里沃的戏剧《移情别恋》。从某一天起，一个神秘奇怪的男人闯入了她们的生活，他声称与她们的另一个同学塞西尔的男友安东尼相识，他告诉她们安东尼牵扯到一起犯罪事件，让她们保持警惕。当她们与这个男人的交往越来越密切，对他有了更多的了解，她们发现他的存在已经对自己的生活和情感造成了巨大的影响，她们不得不想办法除掉他……影片入选1989年《电影手册》十佳。

这部电影比较长，将近三个小时，节奏相对缓慢。其中穿插着许多戏剧排练的场景，人物要经常从现实状态切换到戏剧表演状态，她们所表演的戏剧与现实中的故事没有什么关联，但是到后面我们会发现两者并非完全是互不干扰的，她们的课程会因为现实中的种种因素受到影响，而戏剧也会在某种程度上为她们提供行动的力量和精神的慰藉，让她们更有勇气去处理生活中遇到的麻烦。

字幕根据英文字幕翻译，比较难翻译的地方是她们排演时的对白，这里附上来源网络的《移情别恋》的故事简介，以便更好理解她们排演的内容。

王子（Le Prince）狩猎时偶遇了美丽纯朴的女孩希雅（Silvia），对她一见钟情，便派人将她掳到了王宫。王子迟迟不露面，派王宫近侍特弗朗（Trivelin）出面游说希雅。不知内情的希雅其实已有了心上人——同村的阿尔勘（Arlequin）。王子仆人之女丽雅（Flaminia）自告奋勇派妹妹丽赛特（Lisette）讨好阿尔勘，拆散两人。谁知阿尔勘对丽赛特不屑一顾，反而和温柔大方的丽雅成了好朋友，对她言听计从。随后，王子与阿尔勘开怀畅谈，解开了心结，让阿尔勘醒悟了与希雅青梅竹马的感情与爱无关。（人名翻译与字幕不同）

博尼泽和李维特合作11部，洛朗和李维特合作10部，老搭档了

背景音一直是火车通过的声音，字幕打出的意思是大概在初冬

第一个镜头和第二个镜头是过场，用女学生从咖啡厅走出来去往剧场来带出第一场戏。

大家都会好奇桌上放得什么书，后面才知道就是姑娘们的剧本

第一个镜头还在继续，吃完了下午茶，继续拿着剧本在读

摄影机慢慢回拉，跟随女学生来到餐厅门口，第一个镜头毕，用一个银色铁柱做的中轴线，画面分割成几个区域

第二个镜头，摄影机跟随微笑着的女学生，摇摄从汽车来到了剧场，用剧场的一个进和一个出的门作为稳定中轴分割，背景音是钟声敲了五下，镜头毕

第一场：地点：剧场中；人物：表演系的女学生们和老师；事件：两个女学生在台上表演，老师点评，同时抽问下面的同学们。

拉片重点：

1.用一个看似偶然的跟拍女学生进入剧场，开始表演，马上进入主题“表演”，正所谓“人生如戏，戏如人生。”本场的每一个镜头时间也不短，镜头构图不停的左边拉出一人，画入和画出另外一人，也侧面说明了这种人生的偶然性及其必然性。

2.用一场教学直接带出了除开男主角之外的所有主要人物，包括老师和四名女学生。同时用不同人的不同态度表达了不同的性格，同时在换学生和黄裙女生搭戏的同时，戛然而止。因为导演不需要再给我们看同一场戏的不同表演了。展现了博尼泽和洛朗的剧本功力。

第三个镜头，剧场内的门和墙和地毯是比外门，更加的红色，李维特偏爱红色，同时也是女性的颜色，也是热情的代表

推开第二道门，是更深的棕红色了

第四个镜头，拉开剧场门，除开舞台地面，几乎全红

第四个镜头，女学生根本没往观众席望去，让我们完全不知道还有观众，脱下外套

望向观众席叉腰，陌生人闯入

放下围巾和包，快速站定，两人朝的不同平面

打出字幕，我依然没有搞懂，以为可能是电影名？

很搞笑的是，显示的中文和法文字幕，等会儿又...

走到剧场中央一点，第四个镜头还在继续，切出去了闯入那位

第四个镜头跟随黄裙子回来，右边又画入了闯入者（其实是女孩儿演男角儿，后面第四场戏会详细说老师只收女孩子，但是需要演男角色的情况），画面完全显示了冷色调，明显和现在两人争执的情况合拍

第四个镜头还没有结束，跟随着热情的黄裙子来到了红色的背景，搭戏的男角色逐渐走位来到了她的背影中

继续移动走位，闯入者男角色换站位左边，左边的完整出现了门，代表两个人的争执也许有了出口？

男角色回头看兜里的东西，相对场外的老师说话了，我才知道观众席有人

第五个镜头，切出了黄裙子，男角色在找解决问题的出口

移动站位，继续让男角色回到右边

第五个镜头继续，继续让男角色回到左边，两个人又争执起来了，其实就没有找到解决问题的出口

黄裙子走位到了中间，摄影机回拉，让我们完整的开到舞台和台阶，这场表演要告一段落了

男角色换位到左边，又在试着找到解决办法了

男角色彻底忘词了，反打镜头回来，我们才发现不止老师一个人

老师起身，镜头跟着老师走位，我们发现了，是一群女学生

本场戏还没有结束，但是我不拉了，等着你们自己看

原文链接： http://www.dvdbeaver.com/rivette/OK/threecircles.html

A first circle appears (or a segment of one). Let's call it A, since it is first to appear, though it never ceases throughout the film. This circle is an old theater, which serves as a school where some young women are rehearsing the roles they will play (Marivaux, Corneille, Racine) under the direction of Constance (Bulle Ogier). The difficult thing here is for the girls to express authentic feeling -- anger, love, despair -- with words that are not their own, but those of an author. This is the first sense of play: Roles. One of the girls, Cecile, has left a house in the suburbs to four other girls. She has gone to live elsewhere with the man she loves. The four girls will live together in the house, where they will experience the repercussions of their roles, as well as end-of the-day moods and personal postures, the effects of their private love affairs (to which they only allude), and their various attitudes toward one another. It is almost as if the girls had bounced off the wall of the theater to lead a life which they vaguely share in the house, where bits of their roles are carried over, but spread out in their own lives, with each girl minding her own business. You no longer have a succession of roles governed by a program, but rather a haphazard chain of attitudes and postures following several simultaneous stories that do not intersect. This is the second sense of play: the Attitudes and Postures in their interconnected day-to-day lives. What ceaselessly inspires Rivette is both the group of four girls and their individuation: comic and tragic types, melancholy and sanguine types, graceful and clumsy types, and above all. Lunar and Solar types. This is the second circle, B, inside the first, since it partly depends on the first, by receiving its effects. But circle B distributes these effects in its own way, moving away from the theater only to return to it endlessly.

The four girls are pursued by a man whose identity is unclear -- a con-artist, a spy, a cop -- looking for Cecile's lover (probably a criminal). What's it all about? Stolen IDs, stolen art, arms trafficking, a judiciary scandal? The man is looking for the keys to a locked chest. He tries to seduce each of them in turn, and succeeds with one. The three other girls will try to kill him: the first will try theatrically; the second, coldly; and the third, impulsively. The third girl will in fact beat him to death with a cane. These three scenes are Rivette's greatest moments: absolutely beautiful. This is the third sense of play: Masks, in a political or police conspiracy that goes beyond us, which no one can escape, a kind of global conspiracy. This is the third circle, C, which has a complex relationship to the other two. It prolongs the second circle and is intimately intertwined with it, since it increasingly polarizes the girls' attitudes, providing them with a common measure as it casts its spell on them. But it also spreads out over the whole theater, covering it, perhaps uniting all the disparate pieces of an infinite repertoire. Constance, the director, seems to be an essential element in the conspiracy from the beginning. (Is there not a blank period in her life spanning several years? Does she ever leave the theater, where she hides Cecile's naughty boy, who is probably Constance's lover?) And what about the girls themselves? One girl has an American boyfriend with the same name as the cop; the other girl has the same name as her mysteriously missing sister; and the Portuguese girl, Lucia, who is the epitome of the Lunar type, all of a sudden finds the keys and possesses a painting which is probably real... In short, the three circles are interwoven, acting on one another, progressing through one another, and organizing one another without ever losing their mystery.

We are all rehearsing parts of which we are as yet unaware (our roles). We slip into characters which we do nor master (our attitudes and postures). We serve a conspiracy of which we are completely oblivious (our masks). This is Rivette's vision of the world, it is uniquely his own. Rivette needs theater for cinema to exist: the young girls' attitudes and postures constitute a theatricality of cinema which, measured against the theatricality of theater, contrasts with it and emerges as perfectly distinct from it. And if the political, judicial, and police conspiracies weighing on us are enough to show that the real world has become a bad movie, then it is cinema's job to give us a piece of reality, a piece of the world. Rivette's project -- a cinema that opposes its theatricality to that of theater, its reality to that of the world, which has become unreal -- rescues cinema from the theater and the conspiracies threatening to destroy it. If the three circles communicate, they do so in places which are Rivette's own, like the back of the theater, or the house in the suburbs. These are places where Nature does not live, bur has survived with a strange grace: the undeveloped parts of a suburb, a rural stretch of city street, or secluded corners and alleyways. Fashion magazines have managed to make perfect, frozen pictures of these places, but everyone forgot that these places came from Rivette, having been impregnated with his dream. In these places conspiracies are hatched, young girls live together, and schools are established. But it is also in these places that the dreamer can still seize the day and the night, the sun and the moon, like a great external Circle governing the other circles, dividing up their light and their shadow.

In a certain way, Rivette has never filmed anything else bur light and its lunar (Lucia) and solar (Constance) transformations. Lucia and Constance are not persons, but forces. Bur this duality cannot be divided into good and evil. Hence Rivette ventures into those places where Nature has survived to verify the state in which the lunar and the solar subsist. Rivette's cinema has always been close to the poetry of Gerard Nerval, as though Rivette were possessed by him. Like Nerval, Rivette tours the remains of a hallucinatory Ile-de-France, tells the story of his own Daughters of Fire, and vaguely feels the conspiracy of an indeterminable madness approaching. It is not a question of influence. Bur this encounter makes Rivette one of the most inspired auteurs in cinema, and one of its great poets.

Originally appeared in Cahiers du Cinema, no. 416, February 1989. Reprinted in Two Regimes of Madness (MIT Press, 2006): p. 355-8.