The Captive

France/Belgium, 2000

Prof. Juliette Hassine Presents The Captive:
Chantal Akerman’s film, made under the inspiration of Marcel Proust’s “La Prisonnière”, deals with obsession. Simon, a very rich young man, lives with his girlfriend Ariane and his grandmother in a huge apartment in Paris. He is obsessed with Ariane and despite their living together he feels she is unachievable and wishes to rule her soul and secret dreams on top of her body. Simon follows her through the streets of Paris and asks her close friend, maybe her lover, to pass him information about her. But all his efforts are in vein, Ariane will never be totally his. Akerman creates a tense, smart, beautiful and burdensome inner world, full of film, literary and musical citations. She disconnects the couple from a concrete historical period and treats them as an allegory to a relationship between a man and a woman.

After the screening there will be a meeting with Prof. Juliette Hassine from the Comparative Literature department in Bar-Ilan University, who specializes in the aesthetics of Proust.

Fiction  | 35 mm  |  118   Minutes  |  Color  |  French, English & Hebrew subtitles

Screenplay: Chantal Akerman, Eric de Kuyper, based on the novel “La Prisonniére” by Marcel Proust
Cast: Sylvie Testud, Stanislas Merhar
Cinematography: Sabine Lancelin
Editing: Claire Atherton
Production: Paulo Branco
Festivals: Cannes, Toronto, Thessaloniki
Source: Chantal Akerman, France

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