La Captive

You have to read Proust to appreciate this movie. I imagine it was the most awful, boring treachery to subject someone to if they hadn't read La Captive. Ackerman is actually quite witty in portraying the mental restlessness of the characters, especially Ariane/Albertine constantly being caught in her poorly planned deceptions). In addition to this her visual portrayal of Proust's themes of desire and dissatisfaction are very poignant(although sometimes uncomfortable). An example being the bathing scene, where Simon/Marcel is most vulnerable and unselfishly sensual (I say unselfishly because of the contrast of the other sensual scenes where Ariane is sleeping) but this is only possible for him because of the distance and physical barrier between them. Ackerman is not entirely successful at putting Proust's La Captive on film, but she does make a beautiful, simplified attempt.

This film gets only 5.9?! First, I love Proust, but you do not have to read this specific part of 'In Search of Lost Time' to appreciate this extraordinary story of obsession and the need of one lover to absorb another, and the other lover to need to keep both a distance and a mystery in the relationship.

Chantal Akerman was arguably one of France's greatest directors before she was tragically lost. She was focused in a way that makes most directors seem fuzzy, and her talent with both images and actors was unbeatable. That her images and pacing take their time demands attention from an audience like any work of art. She uses Rachmaninov's music 'Isle of the Dead' as a key motif in sound that puts other overlaid music in most films to shame. I am here to praise this film, but her work as a whole deserves perhaps more praise than it gets. Eric De Kuyper, a great writer who wrote the script with her, is also a filmmaker of importance. Eric De Kuyper, a great writer who wrote the script with her, is also a filmmaker of importance. Everything is in order in this film. Both lead actors are superb, especially Stanislas Merhar who is, in my opinion, a male Garbo among actors. Elusive, beautiful and always holding an essential mystery in his way of acting, he rivets the gaze of the viewer to the screen. There is nothing to fault in this film, and impatient viewers, which most reviewers are, should watch it more than once. It deserves more than the insulting 5.9 it has been given, but then this perhaps reflects the quality of the eyes and minds that receive it.

Modern day adaptation of a section of Proust's magnum opus that is true enough to the book in its theme and events and interestingly has the Marcel character still sunk in an archaic, aristocratic world.

KD Lang lookalike Stanislas Merhar does a good job doing the insulated, emotional (and physical) frailty, trapped in an adolescent infatuation of towering poetic naivety, all the while consumed with jealousy by the suspicion that his live-in girlfriend is an active lesbian behind his back.

It's slow. There's a lot of prowling around his creaking Paris apartment, lots of talking in cars - we seem to be taking entire journeys in real time. Akerman gave herself an easy directing job. The use of classical music is lazy - Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata is suitably Proustian, but Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead is absurdly melodramatic, especially when played incongruously, Godard-fashion, over serene images.

Those familiar with the writer and director can easily pull back the gauze to reveal the real issues - an inverted couple struggling to maintain a hetero relationship - but that is so superficial it hardly seems worth special effort and the film works better with the ambiguity in place (as intended), with the implication that naivety (misunderstanding, confusion) is at the root of jealous passion. The Marcel character is so naïve that in the sex scenes he doesn't even know that he is supposed to put it in - doing the movements without getting undressed (he's in bed in his overcoat in one scene). That was strangely tragic, and although it may have been a stylisation to symbolise their failure to connect, it was easier to take it literally.

With liberties like that though, and done so earnestly, it's craves some indulgence. The worst problem is that the girl is comatose and unattractive, showing nothing of Albertine's sprightliness and guile that gave that character her painful duplicity. The ending too is a disappointment.

This is a subtly faithful interpretation of Proust's The Prisoner in which Chantal Akerman makes chasers and voyeurs out of her viewers, craning to see around street corners, straining to make out desired shapes behind warped glass. While the camera pursues the truth about Ariane, who seems to be forever drifting away, we remain fixed in the claustrophobic world of Simon's preoccupied anxiety. As did Proust, Akerman opens a space for the exploration of co-dependent attachment, not only love, and the painful reality of the search for self- avoidance. The Prisoner leaves the viewer caught between the (apparent) bliss of Ariane's ignorance and Simon's monomaniacal certainty. For me, this is the closest French cinema has come (up to now) to bottling the elusive Albertine scent. The silent film reel that plays during the film's opening too recalls the playful beaches of Balbec In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, foreshadowing undoing and tragedy. A film for anyone who understands obsession.

So many loud and shouting films, so much moving. This movie makes you calm down and should make you think. Aside from the literary background, which I didn't know when watching the movie, I found La Captive very intense and inspiring. If you are in a depressed state of mind, it might not be the right movie to watch. But anyway, then there is at least the great acting and the beautiful camera. My companion wanted to leave, but I resisted and it was worth it.