October 18, 1991 Jodie Foster says there is an element of autobiography in “Little Man Tate,” the first film she chose to direct. It’s the story of a 6-year-old who happens to be a genius, and also happens to be a little boy. Math problems solve themselves in his mind, and he plays piano at a concert level, and when he reads the paper he gets depressed by the news. But he also needs his mom, feels tongue-tied when a lot of adults are looking at him, and gets homesick when he stays away from home overnight. 朱迪·福斯特說，她選擇執導的第一部電影《小大人兒泰特》帶有自傳的元素。這部電影講述的是一個 6 歲孩子的故事，他恰好是個天才，同時也恰好是個小男孩。數學問題在他腦海中自行解決，他彈鋼琴的水平達到了音樂會的水平，當他讀報紙時，他會因為新聞而感到沮喪。但他也需要媽媽，當很多成年人看著他時，他會感到口齒不清，當他在外過夜時，他會想家。 I know Foster is telling the truth when she says there is a little of her own story in the story of Fred Tate, because I met her when she was only a few years older than the little man in her film. 我知道，當福斯特說弗雷德·泰特的故事中有一點她自己的故事，她說的是實話，因為我在她只比電影里的那個小大人兒大幾歲的時候見過她。 She had been appearing in movies since she was 3, but child actors are commonplace and that isn’t what made her special. What was impressive was how smart, cool and observant she was for her age; how she discussed the motivations of her characters and the quirks of her directors. 她從 3 歲起就開始出演電影，但童星很常見，這并不是她的特別之處。令人印象深刻的是她在這個年齡是多么聰明、冷靜和善于觀察；她如何討論角色的動機和導演的怪癖。 I was interviewing her for “Freaky Friday” (1977) or one of those other Disney movies she made. She met me at a health food place on Sunset Boulevard – no publicist in tow – and ordered something with a lot of alfalfa sprouts in it. The next time I saw her, she was already 13, and translating from French to English and back again at the Cannes Film Festival, where she starred in “Taxi Driver.” I mention these meetings for a reason. I sensed a quality in Jodie Foster than I also sense in Fred Tate: a certain balance, a certain perspective on the strangeness of life. Despite spending 25 of her 28 years in show business, Foster is sane, focused and not much impressed by showbiz glitter. Fred Tate is the same way; he looks at things with a level eye, he is not neurotic, he handles a roller-coaster childhood without going nuts. 我當時正在為《瘋狂星期五》（1977 年）或她拍攝的其他迪士尼電影采訪她。她在日落大道一家健康食品店與我會面——沒有公關人員在旁——并點了一份含有大量苜蓿芽的食物。我再次見到她時，她已經 13 歲了，在戛納電影節上把法語翻譯成英語，再把英語翻譯成法語，她在那時主演了《出租車司機》。我提到這些會面是有原因的。我在朱迪·福斯特身上感受到了一種品質，我也在弗雷德·泰特身上感受到了這種品質：一種平衡，一種對生活奇異之處的視角。盡管福斯特在 28 年的演藝生涯中花了 25 年時間，但她很理智、專注，對娛樂圈的浮華并不感冒。弗雷德·泰特也是如此；他用平和的眼光看待事物，他并不神經質，他度過了跌宕起伏的童年，但沒有發瘋。 And that’s one reason why “Little Man Tate” isn’t precisely the movie you’d expect. The child genius (Adam Hann-Byrd) is not treated as a sideshow stunt, nor as a cute gimmick, but as a miniature human being who brings out the worst, and best, of those around him. As the movie opens, he is amazing his mother, Dede (Foster), by reading the bottom of his cereal bowl when he is hardly big enough to lift it. Soon he is painting, playing piano and attracting the attention of Jane Grierson (Dianne Wiest), a child psychologist who runs a school for gifted kids. 這就是為什么《小大人兒泰特》并不是一部你期待的電影的原因之一。這個天才兒童（亞當·漢恩-拜德飾）并沒有被當成雜耍演員或可愛的噱頭，而是一個能激發周圍人最壞和最好的一面的微型人類。電影一開始，他的母親黛黛（朱迪·福斯特飾）就很驚訝，因為他幾乎拿不動麥片碗，卻能讀對碗底上的字。很快，他就開始畫畫、彈鋼琴，并吸引了兒童心理學家簡·格里爾森（黛安·韋斯特飾）的注意，她經營著一所天才兒童學校。 What Foster and her screenwriter, Scott Frank, know about gifted kids is that you mustn’t forget they’re still kids. One of my favorite characters in the movie is an adolescent “mathemagician” with a lightning mind but an obnoxious personality, who wears a magician’s cape at all times and in all places. He’s hard on Fred when he first comes to Grierson’s school, but eventually confides that he has no friends, and that if it weren’t for his brains, “I’d just be another asshole with a cape.” Wiest plays the psychologist as someone who knows everything about children in theory, and nothing in practice. She has an oddly formal way of speaking to Fred, as if she were giving dictation, and she doesn’t have a clue about the needs of a kid his age. Foster, as the mother, may not know much about the theory of child geniuses, but she knows her little boy and is fiercely protective of him, and although sparks fly between the two women eventually there is a rapprochement based on their mutual love of Fred. 福斯特和編劇斯科特·弗蘭克 (Scott Frank) 都知道，天才兒童永遠是孩子。電影中我最喜歡的角色之一是一位青少年“數學魔術師”，他頭腦聰明，但性格討厭，隨時隨地都披著魔術師的斗篷。弗雷德剛到格里爾森的學校時，他對弗雷德很刻薄，但最終他吐露自己沒有朋友，如果不是因為他的大腦，“我只不過是另一個披著斗篷的混蛋。”韋斯特飾演的心理學家在理論上對兒童了如指掌，但在實踐上卻一無所知。她和弗雷德說話的方式非常正式，就像在口述一樣，她對他這個年齡的孩子的需求一無所知。作為母親，福斯特可能對天才兒童理論了解不多，但她了解自己的兒子，并極力保護他，盡管這兩個女人之間有摩擦，但最終基于對弗雷德的共同愛而恢復了關系。 The movie has enough plot, but not too much; it’s loosely centered on a brainy Olympics for smart kids. Foster, who has worked with many different kinds of directors, seems attracted to a kind of film she hasn’t really ever appeared in: the sunny French comedy of truth, as practiced by Truffaut, where the laughs are built on insights, and the movie ends in a resolution rather than a climax. 這部電影的情節足夠豐富，但又不至于太多；它大致圍繞著一場為聰明孩子舉辦的智力奧林匹克競賽展開。福斯特曾與許多不同類型的導演合作過，她似乎對一種她從未真正出演過的電影類型很感興趣：陽光明媚的法式真實喜劇，就像特呂弗所實踐的那樣，笑點建立在洞察力之上，電影以結局而不是高潮結束。 “Little Man Tate” is the kind of movie you enjoy watching; it’s about interesting people finding out about themselves. And as Jodie Foster creates this little man who sees a lot and knows a lot but is only gradually beginning to understand a lot, we can hear echoes, perhaps, of a young girl who once found it more interesting to study French than get her picture in the fan magazines. 《小大人兒泰特》是那種你喜歡看的電影；它講的是有趣的人如何發現自我。當朱迪·福斯特塑造這個見多識廣、但才逐漸開始理解很多事情的小人物時，我們或許可以聽到一個年輕女孩的回聲，她曾經覺得學習法語比在粉絲雜志上露面更有趣。 （羅杰·伊伯特從1967年到2013年他去世之間是芝加哥太陽報的影評人。1975年他因為杰出的評論文章而獲得普利策獎。）