La Captive (The Captive)
| Directer: | Chantal Akerman |
| Starring: | Françoise Bertin, Lilane Rovère, Stanislas Merhar, Sylvie Testud |
| Countries: | France |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Year: | |
| Type: | Color |
| Language: | French w/English subt. |
| Length: | 118 mins. |
| Aspect Ratio: | 1.85:1 |
Synopsis
From acclaimed director Chantal Akerman and inspired by Proust�s La Prisonniére, La Captive is an elegant meditation on desire, obsession, love, and possession.
Handsome, elegantly dressed, and hopelessly neurotic, Simon Levy (Stanislas Merhar) lives in a labyrinthine, half-renovated Paris flat with his ailing grandmother (Françoise Bertin), faithful family servant (Lilane Rovère), and Ariane Rey (Sylvie Testud), the object of his unquenchable desire.
Simon is obsessed with Ariane and keeps her as his willing captive. She tolerates his elaborate desires, his endless interrogations and surveillance. Still, Ariane is able to maintain her own reserve of privacy, her own mental and physical freedom. Although often affectionate to Simon, Ariane prefers women and so leads a double life. But this only magnifies Simon�s pain until his obsessive desires culminate in devastation and tragedy.
(*Previously Distributed by Image Entertainment)
Critical Acclaim
�Inspired by the fifth volume of Rememberance of Things Past, but more directly influenced by Vertigo and Buñuel�s oeuvre, the film is a contemporary surrealist masterpiece and Akerman�s most fully realized feature since Jeanne Dielman.� � Amy Taubin, The Village Voice
�Akerman playfully grounds her film in cinematic traditions by including resonant references to that other masterpiece of masochistic obsession, Alfred Hitchcock�s Vertigo.� - TV Guide
Awards
Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival
Extras on DVD
* Interviews with the director and the film�s star, Sylvie Testud
* Original French trailer
