Chantal Akerman's La Captive is a deceptively simple story following the fascination of a wealthy young man for his apparently innocent and lovely girlfriend. Only loosely drawn from Proust's La Prisonniere, the Proustian elements are often largely submerged. Yet as a study in obsession it is balanced somewhere between Death in Venice and Vertigo. A chase through the streets of--an apparently timeless but actually contemporary--Paris, this is a picture of inexplicable obsession, moved along by fragments of whispered dialogue and a glimpse of bizarre daily ritual. With much of the story framed within the odd anti-hero Simon's grandiose apartment (which he appropriately shares with an ailing, rarely glimpsed grandmother), the film cleverly avoids suffocating its viewers by giving odd gasps of breath from the cheeky, light encounters between his girlfriend Ariane and the beautiful Andree--friends, or possibly sometime lovers. As a portrait of a relationship, La Captive will keep its viewers absorbed with its elegant tone and its intriguing and inexplicable story; but it might just as easily frustrate with its unresolved twists and turns.--Tricia Tuttle
Movie Database
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