The Captive/La Captive (2000)

Handsome and hopelessly neurotic Simon (Stanislas Merhar) lives in a labyrinthine Parisian apartment with his ailing grandmother (Last Year at Marienbad"s Francoise Bertin) and Ariane (Sylvie Testud), the object of his unquenchable desire. Obsessed, Simon keeps Ariane as his willing captive; she tolerates his endless interrogations and surveillance but is able to maintain her own reserve of privacy and freedom. However, she leads a passionate double life with other women that magnifies Simon"s pain and culminates in a devastating finale. Directed by international film sensation Chantal Akerman (A Couch in New York, Night and Day), inspired by Marcel Proust"s La Prisonniere.

Brutally direct look at obsession.

Simon is a writer with an endless supply of nice suits and gorgeous furnishings, living in a beautiful apartment with his girlfriend Ariane, and his ailing mother. The Paris apartment is large, lovely, and currently under renovation; as Simon never seems to do any work, one wonders how he can afford such things. Ariane is the soft-spoken embodiment of the caged bird, a lesbian who allows herself to be kept with Simon, enduring his uncomfortable and odd sexual encounters. Simon, fearing Ariane is not fully his, wants desperately to possess Ariane so much so that his days and nights are filled with interrogations, accusations, and spying. Unsatisfied, he delves deeper into his obsession.

The film is a slow-paced, dreamlike adaptation of the Proust novel. It's somewhat simplified and the dialogue doesn't evoke the depth it's obviously intended to at times. What some would call tedious is actually a brutal and direct view of the deliberate pace of Simon's obsession with Ariane. November 10, 2006

Better than Ambien

This movie is unbelievably soporific. Apart from the Paris scenery - it lacks any merit - I'm sure that the piece from which Proust is touted to have inspired this boring, self indulgent piece of cinema had redeeming context. This has none. What a waste! December 30, 2004

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