La captive (2000)
(The Captive)
Country: FR/BEL
Technical: col 118m
Director: Chantal Akerman
Cast: Stanislas Merhar, Sylvie Testud, Olivia Bonamy
Synopsis:
A wealthy young man falls in love with a free-spirited girl and sets her up in his apartment with his ailing grandmother and servant. Despite her captivity and submissive offering of her person each evening, to which he by no means always accedes, he is pathologically jealous of her friendships with other women, so that he has one of her friends watch her and follows her relentlessly himself.
Review:
A love which wants to know everything about its object meets one which accepts the mystery of the other without desiring to know more: thus Proust's mismatched pair make it to the screen, in an updating which nevertheless retains the atmosphere of a period piece. The camera almost always remains at medium shot length, whether tracking or holding its gaze for some considerable time, as if in imitation of Proust's famously long sentences. Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead imbues a dark sense of foreboding, suggesting a tragic denouement which, when it comes, is none too clear. What will be an infuriating watch for some remains close in spirit to its inspiration and has a power to mesmerise in its observation of these two helpless souls, each as much a captive as the other.
(The Captive)
Country: FR/BEL
Technical: col 118m
Director: Chantal Akerman
Cast: Stanislas Merhar, Sylvie Testud, Olivia Bonamy
Synopsis:
A wealthy young man falls in love with a free-spirited girl and sets her up in his apartment with his ailing grandmother and servant. Despite her captivity and submissive offering of her person each evening, to which he by no means always accedes, he is pathologically jealous of her friendships with other women, so that he has one of her friends watch her and follows her relentlessly himself.
Review:
A love which wants to know everything about its object meets one which accepts the mystery of the other without desiring to know more: thus Proust's mismatched pair make it to the screen, in an updating which nevertheless retains the atmosphere of a period piece. The camera almost always remains at medium shot length, whether tracking or holding its gaze for some considerable time, as if in imitation of Proust's famously long sentences. Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead imbues a dark sense of foreboding, suggesting a tragic denouement which, when it comes, is none too clear. What will be an infuriating watch for some remains close in spirit to its inspiration and has a power to mesmerise in its observation of these two helpless souls, each as much a captive as the other.
(The Captive)
Country: FR/BEL
Technical: col 118m
Director: Chantal Akerman
Cast: Stanislas Merhar, Sylvie Testud, Olivia Bonamy
Synopsis:
A wealthy young man falls in love with a free-spirited girl and sets her up in his apartment with his ailing grandmother and servant. Despite her captivity and submissive offering of her person each evening, to which he by no means always accedes, he is pathologically jealous of her friendships with other women, so that he has one of her friends watch her and follows her relentlessly himself.
Review:
A love which wants to know everything about its object meets one which accepts the mystery of the other without desiring to know more: thus Proust's mismatched pair make it to the screen, in an updating which nevertheless retains the atmosphere of a period piece. The camera almost always remains at medium shot length, whether tracking or holding its gaze for some considerable time, as if in imitation of Proust's famously long sentences. Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead imbues a dark sense of foreboding, suggesting a tragic denouement which, when it comes, is none too clear. What will be an infuriating watch for some remains close in spirit to its inspiration and has a power to mesmerise in its observation of these two helpless souls, each as much a captive as the other.