La Captive at Cinemateca Portuguesa inserted in the program dedicated to “Chantal Akerman: Travelling”
Directed by celebrated Belgian film director Chantal Akerman and loosely based on the fifth volume of Proust’s “À La Recherche du Temps Perdue” it tells an interesting story of love, obsession and desire.
Ariane lives with Simon in his large Parisian flat. Simon is obsessed with her, to the point of following her steps during the day, because he thinks that she is having an affair with another man or another woman. When she goes home he tests her asking what she did, to check if she is telling a lie.
The expression “toxic masculinity” wasn’t much around in the year 2000, when the movie was made, but that’s what we’re dealing with in this movie. Simon is such an obsessive disturbed young man, that even we feel uncomfortable with the level of control that he keeps on Ariane. There are scenes in which he goes as far as demanding to know what she is thinking at the present, or what she as thinking when he said something.
The movie pays tribute in more than one way to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”. Of all the homages made in movies like “Dressed to Kill”, “Basic Instinct”, “Lost Highway” or the recent “The Substance” this is a very interesting variant. The way Simon follows her in the beginning of the movie is very much a shot by shot remake, but then the movie does something entirely different with the idea of obsessive male gaze, it becomes a feminist point of view on the consequences of an abusing relationship – and it is not by chance that Simon can only perform sexually when Ariane is pretending to sleep.
Shot in director’s trademark characteristic long takes, and beautifully lit by director of photography Sabine Lancelin, the movie should be watched today many as cautionary tale, because we know for sure that are twisted love stories like these happening right now in some place.
Post Scriptum: The movie was watched at Cinemateca Portuguesa inserted in the program dedicated to Akerman. We also suggest a visit to MAC/CCB to the exhibition “Chantal Akerman: Travelling” that besides showing her movie career gives us a glimpse to many personal archives of the artist. The exhibition will remain there until September 7th.
AKERMAN; CHANTAL (© Jean-Michel Vlaeminckx-Cinergie)
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Thanks to: MAC/CCB Namalimba Coelho. CINEMATECA PORTUGUESA - Museu do Cinema, IP