Marcel Proust's does not transfer easily to the screen. He's too
literary and complex.
The Captive is filmed like a thriller. A bored rich young man stalks a
girl through the streets of Paris. You expect rape and murder to follow.
It is quite a surprise, therefore, to discover that she stays in his
apartment and appears to be some kind of sex slave.
The intimation is that she's a lesbian and he's impotent. Their
relationship lacks continuity.
He wears an overcoat indoors and looks mournful. He is always well
turned out. She wears stilleto heels that make a racket on polished
parquet floors and has the face of a disappointed angel.
Apart from climbing into his bed at night and waiting for nothing to
happen, she leads a dull life. He leads a duller one. He has a big car and
a chauffeur and a grandmother. She has girlfriends and an aunt. Is this a
film about how weird and boring the upper classes are?
"To dare love a girl takes courage," he says.
"Everything takes courage," she says.
Wow!
From
INSIDE
OUT FILM
Marcel Proust's does not transfer easily to the screen. He's too
literary and complex.
Inspired by Proust's La prisonnière, The Captive is an
elegant meditation on desire, obsession, love and possession. A beautiful
Super-8 opening shows Ariane and her girlfriends frolicking on the beach.
But Ariane's happiness ebbs and flows with the tide. Caught in an
impossible relationship with the intense young Simon, Ariane still finds
it hard to resist her attraction to women.
Leading a double life as Simon's willing "captive" in the enormous old
Paris apartment he shares with his grandmother, she submits to his
desires, despite her preference for women. Simon is for a time both
enticed and tormented by his inability to possess her. But his constant
spying and questioning only drives Ariane away, provoking Simon into a
dramatic attempt at resolution. The classical formality and discretion of
Akerman's mysterious reflection on "otherness," even in love, may remind
some of last year's film The Letter.
"In La captive, a lovely young woman,
Ariane, lives with a
wealthy young man, Simon, in an enormous old Parisian apartment which he
also shares with his grandmother. Simon is obsessed with Ariane and keeps
her as his willing captive. She acquiesces to his elaborate desires, his
ceaseless surveillance and endless questions, responding in vague, neutral
ways that maintain her own reserve of privacy, her own mental and physical
freedom. Sympathetic and even affectionate to Simon, Ariane prefers women
as sexual partners, and leads a (known) double life, thus intensifying
Simon’s pain, obsession and desire.... Beneath the elegant surface-the
banal, casual conversations, the impeccably polite exchanges-there is a
depth of passion surging through Akerman’s most recent work." - Kay
Armatage, Toronto Film Festival.
The Captive was part of the 32nd Directors' Fortnight Cannes
International Film Festival (May10-21, 2000). An interview
with Chantal Akerman is online on the Cannes Festival website.
From Frenchculture.org
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