La Captive

Chantal Akerman was born in 1950 and the variety of styles, tones and formal choices that she has embraced ranges from musicals to documentaries. In 1999, this Belgian filmmaker turned to literature for inspiration: La Captive is her free adaptation of Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière. (1)

Chantal Akerman screened a story about obsessive love. Simon (Stanislas Merhar) wants to know everything there is to know about Ariane (Sylvie Testud). He grills her, tails her and spies on her. He has his friend Andrée (Olivia Bonamy) chaperone her. The idea that Ariane eventually might feel attracted to women fuels Simon's tormented quest.

This urge to pierce someone's secret, and the prying and spying that ensue, are reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Like Scottie (James Stewart), Simon follows Ariane to a museum and watches her absorbed in a work of art. The hairdo on Rodin's sculpture Slav Woman (1906) hints at the bun that Madeleine (Kim Novak) and Carlotta, the character in the painting in Hitchcock's film, wore.

Ariane (a blonde) and Andrée (a brunette) meet by that Rodin sculpture, as if to illustrate the sculptor's point: "Among so many expressions of humanity brimming with life – i.e. with character and beauty - that I had the honour of admiring, there are two that I worked on for a long time, and I see time and again to this day: [...] one is a brunette, the other blonde [...], they both embody the perfection of absolutely opposite natures." (2)