憂鬱探戈：《情婦與鯨》宮籟書寫

Melancholy Tango: Writing Chora in The Whore and the Whale

茱莉亞．克里斯德瓦在《黑太陽》重返前伊底帕斯母女共生的空間「宮籟」，檢視「母性慾物」與「想像父親」相互折返的「自戀憂鬱」心理機制。阿根廷導演路易斯．普恩佐在電影《情婦與鯨》演繹憂鬱與陰性書寫的遞變；女作家薇納嘗試重尋遺失原初客體母親，冀望與想像不可企求之愛，構成電影主要軸線。該片以詩的影像召喚母性想像，企圖為母性、憂鬱、寫作與重生間繁複的關係尋求解脫。筆者擬就片中乳房、探戈與鯨魚等象徵物，討論三位女性跨世代連結的系譜與憂鬱詩性的昇華創作空間：罹患乳癌的作家薇納質問「乳房神話」，並運用電影中三次逆轉的旁白與影像的場面調度，來呈現母性與憂鬱的議題，及以潛藏情慾對比的變化顛覆陽剛論述；一九三○年代妓女蘿拉與薇納在七十年後跨時空，藉探戈舞曲〈薇納與燈泡〉遁入母性原鄉想像，賦予重生力量；馬蒂黛的骨灰與葬身大海的蘿拉屍身相隨，與鯨魚相遇，融入羊水般的子宮大海，成就死亡與復生的儀式。薇納、蘿拉與馬蒂黛三位女性的生命向度，雖因處於「母性匱乏」的社會而產生憂鬱症狀，但這歷經撕扯分裂而藏於內心深處的母性印記「宮籟」，卻是人類原始慾望起源，展現源源不絕的強韌生命力度與再生能量。

In Black Sun, Julia Kristeva traces female psychology back to the maternal chora (mother-Thing) situated in the pre- Oedipal phase and details its dynamic encounter with the imaginary father. The maternal chora and the imaginary father constitute the two parts of this seminal article interwoven to form the basis of a narcissistic assumption that trigger the psychological mechanism of melancholic loss. The 2004 Hispano-Argentine drama film The Whore and the Whale (La puta y la Ballena) constructs a psychological exploration between depression/melancholy and feminine writing within a two generational story of three women who quest for an unquenchable maternal love. The female writer Vera's searches for mother-substitutes, namely in the persons of Lola and Matilde, as loving ''object mothers'' lost in her childhood establishes the essential hub of the film. Luis Puenzo, the Argentine director, visualizes the film with a poetic language that recalls a story of a wounded whale while connecting the fate of the female writer Vera with Lola, a former Spanish chorus girl-turned-prostitute in the Patagonia tango bar. This study analyzes the links between the semiotic chora and depression/melancholy signified by three feminine metaphors for chora: the breast, the tango and the whale in the sea. Vera, who has breast cancer, finally realizes her female consciousness is constructed not only to fight back against masculine breast myths, but also, as heard in the feminine voice-overs, to support resistance to a seemingly dominant male perspective prevailing in the film. The magical self-powering mise-en-scène of ''Vera and the Light Bulb'' crosses the time frame from 1934 to 2003, the period when Vera embraces Lola's motherly power and thus strengthens her writing core. The sea, containing Lola's body, Matilde's ashes, and the wounded whale, represents both an archaic image of a maternal womb and a representation of the female triad. Vera learns a lesson from the motherly ocean through a sacrificial-altar-offering of Lola and Matilde as ghost m/other, subliminal representations of her death drive. Vera becomes a creative daughter-writer of the sea.