La Captive

Any cinematic adaptation of Proust is immediately handicapped by the faithfulness one must bestow in the adaptation and the reverence one must pay to the primary text. Akerman's La Captive is loosely based on La Prisonnière, the fifth volume of Proust's magnus opus, A la recherche du temps perdu. Loosely, for two contrasting reasons. Firstly, Akerman has stated that the film is inspired by the book rather than informed by it, stemming from her unconscious recollections of the source novel. Secondly, the looseness of her adaptation sees an thoroughly modern-updating of the action into the cloistered wealth of upper-middle class Paris that is not entirely successful in marrying the ornateness of Proust's writing with themes of obsession.

Ariane (Testud) lives with her lover Simon (Merhar) and his grandmother in Paris. He becomes obsessed with the thought of a possible lesbian relationship between her and Andreé (Bonamy) simultaneously incarcerating Ariane in his flat whilst also encouraging her to enjoy sexual experiences with Andreé and other women. It seems that the more she eludes him, the more he desires her. La Captive self-consciously alludes to one of cinema's most doomed voyeurs, James Stewart in Vertigo (1958): the film opens with Simon following Ariane across the Place Vendôme and through the streets of Paris's opulent 16th arrondissement, tracking her to a hotel and an art gallery. But whereas Scottie Ferguson suffered from some perverse amour fou, Simon's obsession seems to stem from an unconscious desire to 'interpret' Ariane (the film opens with him looking at her in a home video trying to decipher what she is saying).

In her breakthrough films, Akerman has explored the concept of urban claustrophobia and the literal and metaphorical trapping of emotions. Both Hôtel Monterey (1972) and La Chambre (1973) examined this isolation while the sumptuous designed apartment in this film echoes the cork-lined study where Proust did most of his writing - both places are hermetically sealed spaces where the intricacies of obsession (both literary and sexual) play out.

Unlike Ruiz's masterful Time Regained, which relied on a symbiosis of traditional Proustian iconography and Merchant-Ivory costume dramas - music, sound, smell, taste, nature - La Captive revels in its director's own trademark minimalism - only the clever use of music (Rachmaninov, Mozart, Schubert) hints at the baroque world of Proust's novel. Akerman relies instead on home movies and convertible sports cars and as a result, the couple's behaviour seems all the more puzzling when mapped onto this modern-day aesthetic.

Sabine Lancelin's translucent photography manages to capture the glacial brittleness of the Parisian milieu. The minimalist decor of the apartment coupled with Akerman's rendering of the empty deserted landscapes in the film's second half increase the sense of alienation, whilst the long takes hint at a kind of perpetual dream-like unravelling of Simon's obsession. The key scene in the film is arguably Simon and Ariane bathing either side of a glass partition - the image is a striking metaphor for erotic unattainability and the film's narrative opacity.

As a tale of dysfunctional love, Akerman may succeed in depicting a complex study on the nature of desire. Ironically it is Simon who is 'the captive'; he is kept prisoner in his own labyrinth of jealousy. Yet Ariane has perhaps the film's most problematic (and unintentionally insightful) line when she intones "I think of nothing". Unfortunately, unless the spectator is accustomed to Akerman's deliberate cinematic languor and her actors' dreamlike, anti-naturalistic acting style, they will echo this sentiment as the credits roll.

Reviewed by Ben McCann