先表明出处：User-submitted review of "Poor Things" imdb.com

Poor Things (2023) is an ostensibly feminist film directed by a man, written by a man, and based on a book written by a man... and it shows. This isn't the feminist masterpiece many people claim it to be, and there are a few deeply problematic elements that make most of it feel downright icky. It's about an extremely sheltered (read: imprisoned) young woman's coming of age (mostly via sexual liberation) and the journey she takes to outgrow the various men who seek to control her in one way or another.

《可怜的东西》是一部表面上女权主义的电影，由男性导演、男性编剧，并根据男性写的书改编……，并（将这些特质）表现了出来。这并不是许多人声称的女权主义杰作，其内含一些很有问题的元素，使电影的大部分内容让人感觉非常恶心。这是关于一位受到极度庇护（即被囚禁）的年轻女性的成年过程（主要是通过性解放）以及她摆脱各种试图以种种方式控制她的男人所经历的旅程。

The film takes the 'born sexy yesterday' trope and pushes the sickly male fantasy even further by making Emma Stone's Bella not only naïve but actually, at least to begin with, a literal baby inside an adult's body. The concept is that an experimental surgeon (a make-up-caked Willem Dafoe) finds a recently deceased pregnant woman and decides to put the infant's brain into the mother's skull and reanimate her. The unborn child is birthed directly into an adult body, skipping over the physical development but still going through the mental development. It's mentioned that her motor skills will come slowly, but that her mind will develop at an advanced rate. This doesn't really make sense, as absurdist and impressionistic as it is intended to be, and it seems to be accelerated purely because the piece doesn't want to be scrutinised over the icky insinuations of its own concept.

这部电影采用了“Born Sexy Yesterday”的比喻，通过给予艾玛·斯通饰演的贝拉不仅天真，而且实际上，（至少从电影一开始）一个在成人身体里的婴儿的形象，将电影推进病态的男性幻想。这个电影中的概念是：一位实验外科医生（浓妆艳抹的威廉·达福饰）发现了一位最近去世的孕妇，并决定将婴儿的大脑放入母亲的头骨中并让她复活—未出生的孩子直接出生在成人体内，跳过了身体发育，但仍然经历了心理发育。据说她的运动技能会慢慢发展，而她的心理会以较高的速度发展。但这实际上并没有意义（尽管它本来是荒诞主义和印象派的），且这种设定似乎纯粹是为了加速该作品的审查程序，因为主创团队深知该电影自身概念的令人讨厌的暗示（pedophilia)。

注：Born Sexy Yesterday (BSY) 是电影和电视节目（由男性创作并为男性创作）中常见的性幻想，围绕散发着性感魅力的女性角色，但除了她们的身体美感外，她们模仿着一个孩童的行为、智力和态度。这种比喻已经存在了几十年，但直到最近才开始被有意识地理解。

The narrative can't take place over more than a couple of years, but it's heavily implied that the hero has grown from being a babbling baby at the start to a self-actualised woman at the end. The timeline for all this is uncomfortably ambiguous, though. Although Emma Stone and writer Tony McNamara have said Bella is actually about sixteen, mentally speaking, when the sex starts (which is still very young, especially in relation to the men she gets involved with, but is at least more akin to the generally accepted age for media portrayals of sexual coming of ages), her mental age is consistently ambiguous. She still walks with the ungainly gait of a toddler when she's supposedly close to the brain age of twenty and she remains acutely innocent even as her general maturity begins to show. The capacity to learn and grow that comes with getting older is separate to the knowledge you gain from having actual experiences, and there is a point at which it's evident Bella is capable of understanding the world around her like an adult even though there are still plenty of things she has yet to be exposed to and are therefore a mystery to her. Even if she is sixteen when we first see her do the deed, the sequence in question - as well as almost all those that follow it - still boils down to a creepy older man having sex with - at oldest - a teenager who is incredibly naïve and unaware that the bloke is taking advantage of her. As others have pointed out, children can't give consent, and misguided consent isn't consent either (you can't consent to something without properly understanding it).

故事的整个发生事件不会超过几年，但它强烈地暗示着主人公已经从一开始的咿呀学语的婴儿成长为最后一个自我实现的女人。然而，这一切时间发生的时间表却非常模糊。尽管艾玛·斯通和编剧托尼·麦克纳马拉说过贝拉的实际年龄大约唯十六岁，从心理上来说，当性行为开始时（即使这样十六岁还是一个过于年轻的年龄，特别是相对于她所接触的男人而言，但其至少更接近于普遍接受的观念），她的心理年龄始终是模糊的。当她的大脑年龄被认为接近二十岁时，她仍然以蹒跚学步的笨拙步态行走，尽管她整体上开始显现出成年女性的特质，但她仍然非常天真。从年龄的增长中获得的学习和成长与你从实际经历中获得的知识是分开的。在某种程度上，贝拉显然有能力像成年人一样理解她周围的世界，尽管如此还有很多她尚未接触过的事物，而这些事物对她来说仍是一个谜。即使我们第一次看到她进行性行为时她已经十六岁了，在这样模糊的时间顺序下所进行的性行为，以及几乎所有随后的性行为，仍然可以归结为一系列的“一个令人毛骨悚然的年长男人与一个非常天真的青少年发生性关系”。她不知道那个家伙正在利用她，就像很多其他评论指出的那样，儿童不能表示同意，并且误导性的同意也不可算作同意。（在没有正确理解某事的情况下，你不能/做不到同意它）

Even if Bella wasn't younger than she appeared, her sheltered sincerity would still craft a dynamic that plays into that odd male power fantasy of engaging with a woman who isn't equally as experienced as them. The men in the movie are totally taken with Bella's childlike demeanor, falling head over heels for her because - not in spite - of her younger mental state, and that's massively unsettling. Of course, that is kind of the point. However, the story frames Bella's experiences with these men as a means of her achieving adulthood and ultimately doesn't decry them as much as it should. The most likeable male character (Ramy Youssef) calls her lovely as soon as he sees her, even though she's acting like a toddler, and then proposes to her with the full knowledge that he's proposing to someone who, again, is in her early teens at the absolute latest (this isn't treated as a problem, and he is positioned as the only 'good' guy left by the film's end). It's all just a gross variation of a bizarre male fantasy that really shouldn't be something anyone fantasises about.

即使贝拉到了内在不比外在年轻的阶段，她隐藏的真诚仍然会营造出一种动力，这种动力会营造出一种（电影中的）男性与不像他们一样有经历的女人交往的奇异男性权力幻想。电影中的男人们完全被贝拉孩子气的举止迷住了，他们为她神魂颠倒，只因她比他们更年轻的心理状态—这非常令人不安。当然，这就是重点。然而，这个故事将贝拉与这些男人的经历视为她实现成年的一种手段，但最终却并没有因这些男人的行为而谴责他们。电影中最受喜爱的男性角色（拉米·优素福饰）一看到她就用“可爱”来形容她（注意：此处的词为“lovely”而非“cute”，前者多用于形容婴儿或小孩可爱，英文语境中很少用“lovely”来形容一个成年人可爱），尽管她表现得像个小孩。然后在明确自己正在向一个最年长不过初入青春期的女孩求婚的认知下，他还是向她求婚了。且这不被视为一个问题，因为他被定位为电影结束时唯一留下的“好男人”。这些林林总总加起来，不过是一个奇形怪状男性幻想的粗俗变体，实在不应该是任何人所憧憬的幻想。

I'm not sure if it's to the film's credit or to my own that none of the sex scenes ever feel sexy, primarily because it always feels downright wrong to be seeing Bella participate in them. Despite the fact that she's played by an attractive adult actress, you can't separate what you're seeing from the context in which you're seeing it. You never forget that the character herself isn't as old as the person portraying her, even when her mental age might have caught up to her physical age, but it's difficult to say whether that's due to the filmmaking itself or due to the way in which the viewer reacts to what they're seeing. To be fair, the sexual scenarios are all filmed with a kind of detachment that massively reduces their in-the-moment male gaze, even though it's still apparent and runs throughout the actual narrative (despite the female protagonist and themes of female liberation).

我不确定是这部电影叙事还是我自己的原因，这部电影中没有一个性爱场面让人感觉性感，主要是因为看到贝拉在其中的表现会让人们感觉这完全是错误的。尽管事实是她是由一位有吸引力的成人女演员扮演的，但你无法将你所看到的内容与其发生的剧情背景分离开。你永远不会忘记，角色本身并不像扮演她的人那么老，即使她的心理年龄可能已经赶上了她的身体年龄，但很难说这是由于电影制作本身还是由于观众对其所看到的内容做出反应的方式。事实上，所有性爱场景都是以一种疏离的态度拍摄的，这样的手法大大减少了拍摄当下的男性凝视，尽管男性凝视仍然很明显并且贯穿整个实际叙事（尽管有女性主角和女性解放的主题）。

All of this begs the question: what about the concept of a baby's brain being put into an adult's body indicates it should be used to kickstart a story that's primarily about sexual liberation? Why is Bella's development viewed almost entirely through the lens of sexual discovery? It's a very weird place to take the concept; there are many potent elements that comprise someone's journey into adulthood. It's a massive missed opportunity to explore some of these aspects. Perhaps the picture's second most prominent aspect is its depiction of the patriarchy and its protagonist's almost accidental breaking of it (at least when it comes to her specific experience). It gets really close to making a point about this, but it settles for making most of the men in the movie look like total idiots and, as great as that is, it feels like more could have been done. Others have pointed out there's no mention of menstruation, which is a key milestone on the path to womanhood, which indicates that the piece isn't as concerned with the female experience of growing up as it thinks it is. By focusing so much on its sexual aspects and going out of its way to make them as inappropriate as possible (one-upping the 'born sexy yesterday' trope by throwing a literal infant into the fray), it's just very yucky overall and it isn't even done in a way designed to challenge the audience (it almost feels like it wants you to forget about the specifics of its underlying concept after a short while).

所有这些都引出了一个问题：婴儿大脑被放入成人体内的概念是否合适的被用来讲述一个主要关于性解放的故事？为什么贝拉的发育几乎完全是从性发现的角度来看待的？这是一个非常奇怪的概念。一个人的成年之旅是由许多重要的因素组成的。而不去探索这些因素是这部电影一个巨大的失误。也许这部电影的第二个最突出的方面是它对父权社会的描绘以及主角几乎是意外地冲破了它（至少在她的具体经历方面）。在表达这一点上，这部电影已经非常接近了，主创团队让电影中的大多数男人描绘成十足的白痴，尽管这已是十足的进步，但感觉还是差了临门一脚。其他人则指出，这部作品没有提及月经，一个女性成长道路上的重要里程碑，这表明该作品并不像它想象的那样关注女性的成长经历。这部电影过分多地关注性方面，用尽全力使性行为显得不合适（将一个语义上的婴儿加入性行为这样的“BSY”的暗示），总体来说非常令人讨厌，而且它甚至没有以一种旨在挑战观众的方式完成（几乎感觉它故意设计让观众在短时间后忘记其背后概念的细节）。

It may sound like I hate the feature, but I don't. From a technical standpoint, it's well-made in pretty much every area and it has an unconventional approach to its aesthetic that makes it distinct from its peers. Its performances are also all really good, with Stone impressing the most. It isn't especially boring, even if it isn't particularly compelling for long stretches, and it also inspires a fair bit of thought if you're willing to engage with it critically. You can call it a lot of things, but bland isn't exactly one of them.

虽听起来我似乎厌恶这部电影，但其实并非如此。从技术角度来看，它几乎在每个领域都制作精良，并且它的美学方法打破常规，这使得它与同类产品不同。演员表演也都非常出色，其中斯通给人的印象最为深刻。即使它在长时间观赏下并不很引人入胜，这部电影并不无聊，而且如果你愿意批判性地参与它，它也会激发你的一些思考。很多词都可以用来公平公正地形容它，但“平淡无聊”绝不是其中之一。

The feature isn't the laugh riot many people are claiming it to be, but it is mildly amusing (I don't think I actually laughed once, but I did smile a few times and did one of those sharp nose inhales on one occasion). The first movement is rather difficult to get through; I didn't particularly enjoy any of it. When the piece pops into colour and starts its second act, it slowly gets more interesting and enjoyable. It also becomes even more visually appealing, with fantastic steampunk-esque sets and elaborate frilly costuming captured with delightfully vivid cinematography. The best parts of the picture aren't when it's indulging in its infamous sex scenes (which, despite their frequency, aren't actually as explicit or gratuitous as their reputation would suggest), but instead when Bella is on her journey of self-discovery. This segment leans into the increasing frustration of her insecure companion (an accent-chewing Mark Ruffalo), providing space for the picture to begin to critique the caveman male ego, alongside her exposure to things like philosophy and suffering, which paves the way for her to develop her intellectual and emotional aspects independently of her sexuality (which, for large portions of the affair, is the only way she gets to express and explore herself, cementing the flick's somewhat misguided concept that sexual liberation is the highest form of female empowerment - an idea which flattens feminism, as well as the female experience itself, to only one of its many elements). Though it doesn't fully explore its potentially powerful themes and arcs, it's intriguing to see the protagonist grow as a character and drive the men around her to insanity simply by being entirely unconcerned with their notions of what she should be. The feature slowly but surely becomes more enjoyable as it goes along. Unfortunately, it then takes a hard turn into a sort of epilogue that's incredibly on-the-nose and feels unnecessary. It also introduces an outright villain (Christopher Abbott) whose inclusion only really serves to dilute the misconduct of every other male character (including the 'good'-coded Fiancée, who - let's not forget - decided to marry a child in an adult's body). This segment tanks the pacing and highlights the fact that it's just way too long overall. This goes hand in hand with the other narrative issues to create an experience that's ultimately rather disappointing. It's not just that its narrative is misguided at best, it's also that it isn't that entertaining. It isn't terrible, and there is a stretch where it's even rather good, but I don't find myself particularly moved by any of it and it isn't something I'd actively recommend. Despite its surface-level yet undeniable visual wonder and its genuinely strong performances, it's a bit of a slog to get through and it often makes you feel uncomfortable in the worst kind of way (it's not challenging, it's just creepy).

这部电影并不是很多人声称的那样大笑，但它还算有趣（我不认为在观影过程中我真的大笑过，但我确实轻笑了几下，并在一幕倒吸了一口冷气）。电影的第一部分令人难熬：我没有在任何一个桥段感到愉悦。当电影开始上色并开始第二幕时，它慢慢变得更加有趣和令人愉快。它也变得更具视觉吸引力—梦幻般的蒸汽朋克风格布景和精致的褶边服装被以令人愉悦的生动摄影所捕捉到。影片中最好的部分并不在于其臭名昭著的性爱场景（尽管这些场景很频繁，但实际上并不像他们的声誉所暗示的那样露骨或大方），而在于当贝拉踏上自我之旅时。这一段主要讲述了她缺乏安全感的同伴（操着口音的马克·鲁法洛饰演）日益增加的挫败感，为影片提供了开始批评男性井底之蛙特性的空间，同时她接触到的哲学和苦难等事物也为她独立地理解她在性方面中的智慧和情感开辟了道路。（在大部分时间里，性是她表达和探索自己的唯一方式。这巩固了这部电影有点误导的概念，即性解放是女性赋权的最高形式——这种想法将女权主义以及女性经历本身扁平化为众多元素中的一个）。尽管这部电影没有充分探索其潜在的强大主题和内核弧线，但看到女主角的角色成长以及看她将她周围的男人逼疯，仅仅因为她完全不关心他们对她应该成为什么样子的看法，也是十分有趣的。随着情节发展，这部电影会慢慢地变得有趣。不幸的是，这部电影的结尾是如此地恶臭且没有必要。它引入了一个彻头彻尾的恶棍（克里斯托弗·阿博特饰），他的加入实际上只是为了淡化所有其他男性角色的不当行为（包括被设置成“好男人”的未婚夫，别忘了，她决定嫁给一个成年人身体里的孩子） 。这段剧情节奏莫名地快，并证实了其电影时长总体上太长的事实。其与其他叙事问题同发，创造了一种最终相当令人失望的体验。这部电影的叙述是误导的，且也不有趣。这部电影不能说糟糕或不忍直视，而且有一段甚至相当不错，但我发现自己并没有因其中任何一个情节特别感动，而且这也不是我会推荐的电影。尽管它有着表面上不可否认的视觉奇观和强有力的演出，但要看完这部电影却是一段难熬的经历，而且其常常让你以最糟糕的方式感到不舒服（他不是在挑衅你，只是令人觉得变态）。