Die schöne Gefangene

This has a little style and some flair and a modicum of interest but in the main it is pretentious tosh without hardly any justification for watching it. It is neither erotically visually exciting or intellectually involving, both of which I am sure it was supposed to be. It is never a good sign when bits of footage are repeated time and again and usually seem a very crude way of making a point or just a way to pad out a very thin story. Did I say 'story'? Now don't get me wrong I don't demand a story but if I am presented with a rather verbose storyline that goes nowhere, I can get a bit fidgety. There are good moments in this and one or two nice shots but there are far too many meaningless shots of the waves and a motorbike. Last Year at Marienbad, can seem slow but it is also poetic and utterly involving, the same cannot be said of this I am afraid.

Alain Robbe-Grillet, in his post-MARIENBAD career, has made a decent living for himself combining his structuralist maze-narratives with skin, guns, black leather, trapezes and motorcycles. In short he has managed to wedge one of the artiest of art-movie genres into the Erotic Thriller shelf of your local video store. (But don't expect to see any Robbe-Grillets there soon.) Before a dismal tail-off (it was all a dream! or was it? no, it was! or was it?) Robbe-Grillet manages to solder together a pleasing array of rhymes, repetitions, hangovers, frames-within-frames, and other toylike devices which he wisely powers with High Surrealist fuel: dreamlike sexual obsessiveness. The first twenty minutes or so of LA BELLE CAPTIVE combine story elements from EYES WIDE SHUT and KISS ME DEADLY--a winning combination (and one that suggests more that Robbe-Grillet read Schnitzler's "Traumnovelle" than that Kubrick jacked Robbe-Grillet's conception). As always in Robbe-Grillet, the combination of elegant, "meaningless," self-referential puzzling with lurid, charged material makes for a powerful experience--Andre Breton 2.0. Too bad that, unlike his late, masterly THE BLUE VILLA (still shamefully undistributed), LA BELLE CAPTIVE cops out so shamefully. One must now acknowledge, after LA BELLE CAPTIVE, Antonioni's IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN, EYES WIDE SHUT and MULHOLLAND DRIVE, that the Cheesy Erotic Thriller is now the dominant paradigm of the Western art film.

Stiff, humourless fantasy in which a chap gets sucked into a surreal nightmare after meeting a woman in a nightclub and finding her dead on the road shortly after. You can sense the writer-director desperately trying to strip away the ordinary meaning of things, only to inadvertently reinforce them by means of allusion and connotation, of which the film is largely comprised, as there's little original here. Much of it seems to be a nod to Melville, with our despondent hero being some kind of secret agent in a raincoat.

It's a game that feels as though it's being made up as it goes along - the girl's a ghost, no she isn't, it was all a dream, no it wasn't - the only interesting thing is the auteur's ulterior motive in making the film. Clearly you can't trust reality, or your idea of it - the ultimate paranoia. If that's it, it's simplistic, and unfortunately it's none too amusing or entertaining, apart from the chick on the bike. Surrealism being some decades past its sell-by date at this point, the sense is of Robbe-Grillet having his finger on the pulse of a cadaver.

" - Je me sentais vide, translucide, pas à ma place parmi ces faux danseurs..." It is no obligation and artistic freedom that apply. Stylized and elevated. Et profondément français. As in the theatre. The French theatre. Where the feminine is presented and handled as objects. Often admirable objects. Naked. Even when fully clothed. While the masculine populace strolls among these things, values and penetrates. And seeks support and acceptance in the male environment. A French formula that we in the audience proudly accepts.

"La belle captive" is a play with the possibilities of cinematography. I bet it stands on David Lynch's most valued shelf. Because the film is practically a model for "Twin Peaks". As it has become an important inspiration for the Lynch-era 1986-1999.

Alain Robbe-Grillet writes like very few others. But his imagery/metaphorical language is surprisingly lame. Sometimes even awkward. And on top of that, using a narrator's voice ... There are a bouquet of scenes in "La belle captive" that are deeply unforgettable. And the film breeds analysis and reflection. Still, it's just a game. A distraction. " - I felt empty, translucent, out of place among these fake dancers..." "In his seminal collection of essays, Pour un Nouveau Roman, Alain Robbe-Grillet launched a polemic against the dominant, realist literary mode characterized by the absolute time of linear chronology moving to create related event and causality and to fulfill a destiny. [...] The role of Balzacian absolute time was to arouse emotion by creating suspense and to provide the psychological satisfactions of meaning, resolution, and closure in a world considered objective, concrete, but nonetheless in the image of man who projected himself and his meanings by analogy and metaphor on the environment. (Raylene L. Ramsay)

This is the second Robbe-Grillet movie i watch, first one was "L'immortelle". I think "La belle captive" is slightly better. To be precise, i can't tell for sure this is objectively better, i just liked it more, even though, as it seems, ""L'immortelle"" has a better reputation. Definitely, visually wise, it was superior. However, "La belle captive" seems to me more coherent and accessible. Not that it makes sense - it doesn't. After all, it's Robbe-Grillet. But i could empathize more with the characters and there is something else : The mysteries here are just an excuse. Most important thing is the leading character. Whereas in other mystery movies with no resolution, viewer gets frustrated, in this movie, mysteries are not that important. Leading character's journey is the most important thing here and his reactions to all the weirdness around him.

I know that my review is not helpful at all. In conclusion : If you like art drama/mystery movies, something like a French David Lynch in his most bizarre but not that intriguing, you will like it as well.