The Captive (2000)

Chantal Akerman made a Proust movie? I had to watch it (Jeanne Dielman is one of those movies I have on my mind all the time). I guess you will get something out of The Captive if you have actually read Proust, as some of the plot quite subtly hints at certain tensions that are not explored in the movie. Proust wrote two fat volumes about the catastrophy that was the relationship between jealous Marcel and 'secretive' Albertine. In the film, Albertine is Ariane and Marcel is Simone, but the theme is still there: poisonous jealousy. From the first few scenes onwards, we are thrown into the world of a stalker. But what does that stalker want?  What does he want from Ariane? Why is he so fixated with 'telling the truth'? Proust lets us into the world of this outrageous character, but he provides no comfortable psychological answers, and nor does the film. The film has a simple structure: the camera follows Simone in his pursuit of ... whatever. We see him walking restlessly around his big apartment, spying on his girlfriend and her friendds, interviewing people about Ariane's possible Vice. Even though Akerman doesn't follow Proust all the way (who could in a film like this?) The Captive still occupies a place pretty close to the text. I have to confess that this film did not blow my mind. Still, it was a good film about obsession - and a certain form of corrupted love where love is based on fantasy so that the only relationship the lover has is with a fantasy, not a human being. What made me a bit hesitant about how the film developed was that it made the 'mystery' of Ariane into a slightly different issue than in Proust's book. Did Akerman want to conjur up the image that we 'can never know one another, no matter how much we try'? If so, the film would fall flat. The big question is exactly what meaning it has to say that Simone/Marcel can not 'have' Ariane/Albertine.