《致青春2•原来你还在这里》 中外影片里的青春

I went to the movie theater the other day to see Never Gone (《致青春2•原来你还在这里》). I knew it was probably going to be another film where actors in their late 20s pretend to be in high school. No surprise there.

前几天，我去电影院看了《致青春2•原来你还在这里》。我猜这大概又是一部让20大几岁的演员装成高中生样子的电影。事实上也果然如此。

The one unexpected part came in the casting of the characters. Typically, Chinese youth films tend to focus on the chemistry between a high school bad boy and his polar opposite, a *prim, upstanding female character. Never Gone switches the roles and turns it into the story of a rich, straight-A boy who meets an *underprivileged girl. But after a fleeting moment of surprise, I soon realized it was just the same Cinderella tale all over again.

令我没有想到的是角色的设定。典型的中国青春片大多描绘的是在高中校园里，一个坏男孩和一个端庄优秀的女孩之间的化学反应。之前还从来没有过男女双方的形象互换：一个成绩优秀的富家男孩遇见了一个来自下层社会的女孩。但随着惊喜感的消逝，我慢慢开始意识到，这不过又是一个灰姑娘的故事。

Youth-oriented films seem trapped in a fixed pattern: They all center on a *sensational love story, rife with anxiety about school and the future, and they all have to be told in the form of dramas–lots and lots of dramas. The clichéd and almost always predictable plot twists manage to kill all the fun.

青春片似乎都陷入了一个固定的套路：一场轰轰烈烈的爱情故事，以及对于学校生活和前途的焦虑。而这些都以戏剧化的方式呈现出来——大量戏剧化场面。而正是这些老套且几乎可以预见的情节，抹杀了影片的所有乐趣。

Then a friend recommended an American film, Everybody Wants Some!!, released earlier this year. It was the work of the veteran American director Richard Linklater, and it had gotten largely positive reviews for its tale of college-aged *shenanigans.

于是，一个朋友向我推荐了一部今年早些时候上映的美国电影《各有少年时》。这部影片是老练的美国导演理查德•林克莱特之作，且因其讲述的一个大学生恶作剧而广受好评。

The story couldn’t be any simpler. In late August 1980, three days before the new semester starts at Texas Southern University, an 18-year-old freshman named Jake arrives in his new dorm and meets his roommates. Those three, short days form the time frame for the whole film, in which the boys get laid, get stoned, get bored–just being young and absolutely free. They also talk, play baseball and search for self-discovery.

影片的情节十分简单。故事发生1980年8月底，在南德州大学开学前三天，一名叫做杰克的18岁大一新生来到新宿舍，并见到了他的室友们。这短短的三天便构成了整部影片的时间框架。在这三天里，这些男孩们曾风流一夜，飘飘欲仙，也曾无所事事，百无聊赖——年少张扬而又无拘无束。他们也会一起聊天，一起打棒球，一起探求自我。

The whole time while watching the film I was waiting for something to happen–the usual *clunky plot twist, one that veered the narrative into the realm of *sappy teen dramas. But nothing like that did. The film has no climax and little drama. Everything seems to flow naturally, as if the characters are in an *eternal present. The film is about three days of youth, yet it seems to show all that youth is ever about.

在观影全程，我都在等待着一些事情的发生——常见的繁冗的情节转折，让主人公陷入少年的多愁善感。但这些都没发生。这部影片没有高潮也极少有戏剧化的起伏。一切进展得都如此自然，就像角色们都身处一个永恒的现在。电影只讲述了青春里的三天时光，但那展示的似乎就是青春的全部。

If you have watched Linklater’s classic “Before” trilogy–Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013)–or his 12-year-long project Boyhood (2014), you may already know that this is part of his unconventional storytelling style.

如果你曾看过林克莱特经典的“爱在”三部曲：《爱在黎明破晓前》（1995），《爱在日落黄昏时》（2004），《爱在午夜降临前》（2013）；或是他历经长达12年创作的《少年时代》（2014），你大概就会了解，这就是他突破传统的叙事风格。

“Richard Linklater has never cared about plot in his movies, and he’s never really concerned himself with *adhering to genre, either,” wrote American reporter Bryan Bishop on The Verge. “What Linklater loves to do is simply hang with his characters.”

“理查德•林克莱特从不关心他电影里的情节，他也从不将自己限于流派之中，”美国记者布莱恩•毕晓普在前沿网上评论道。“林克莱特喜欢的只是和他的角色们在一起。”

Some movie critics have called Everybody Wants Some!! another one of Linklater’s “masterpieces”. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, probably because I failed to connect with the film’s setting. It’s clearly a *nostalgia piece, celebrating 1980s Americana, with its *mustachioed characters and bell-bottom jeans. But Linklater’s novel way of depicting youth is strangely appealing.

一些电影评论家将《各有少年时》称为林克莱特的又一杰作。我不会对这部影片有如此高的评价，大概是我无法从影片设定中找到共鸣。很显然，这是一个赞颂美国80年代的怀旧影片，片中人物都蓄着浓密的胡子，穿着喇叭裤。但是林克莱特描绘青春的新意，却十分吸引人。

Perhaps the only word that I can think of to best describe the film is “different”–and not in a bad way.

或许，我能想到的，用来形容这部电影的最好的词便是——“与众不同”，而且这方法还不错。