La belle captive (1983)

Director:

Alain Robbe-Grillet

Writers:

Alain Robbe-Grillet (written by)
Franck Verpillat (co-adaptation)

Release Date:

16 February 1983 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Mystery

Plot:

Walter is told by his boss, Sara, to deliver an urgent letter to Henri de Corinthe. On the way he finds...

Plot Keywords:

Female Nudity | Female Frontal Nudity | Reference To Magritte | Sex

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Daniel Mesguich	...	Walter Raim
Cyrielle Clair	...	Sara Zeitgeist
Daniel Emilfork	...	Inspector Francis
François Chaumette	...	Dr. Morgentodt
Gabrielle Lazure	...	Marie-Ange van de Reeves
Gilles Arbona	...	Le barman
Arielle Dombasle	...	La femme hystérique
Jean-Claude Leguay	...	Le cycliste
Nancy Van Slyke	...	La serveuse
Denis Fouqueray	...	Le valet (as Denis Foucray)
Michel Auclair	...	La voix de Walter, off (voice)
Roland Dubillard	...	Prof van de Reeves
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Guy Bonnafoux	...	Un homme en smoking

Also Known As:

The Beautiful Prisoner

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Colour:

Colour (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Italy:VM14 | UK:15 | France:-12 | Iceland:12

Company:

Argos Films

Quotes:

Marie-Ange van de Reeves: I'll find you if I need to. Maybe tonight. Maybe never. Or maybe yesterday. Time doesn't exist for me.

Soundtrack:

Le quinzième quatuor (Streichquartett Nr. 15 op. 161. D. 887)

Epistemological thriller

La Belle Captive is a very odd film. An assassin (Walter Raim) meets a woman in a bar, Marie-Ange van de Reeves (van de Reeves - literally "of dreams"), but she won't tell him her name or anything about herself, content merely to lead him on. He becomes obsessed. Sara Zeitgeist, his superior later meets him at the crossroad of graves and gives him a message to be delivered immediately to the Comte de Corinthe. En route he discovers the beautiful Marie-Ange bound, bloody and dishevelled in the road, yet still alive. Later he sleeps with her and she is disappears. The rest of the movie is spent with attempts to understand or recapture what happened (a la Marienbad). Although as initiates know the past is often inscrutable, and our memories unfaithful.

The starting credits are shown in the middle of an open picture frame on a beach looking at the sea. So we know straight away we're in Rene Magritte land, fetishism, the play of the known and knowable versus the unknown and the unknowable, mystery, identity, and sensuality. One possible criticism could be that he Magritte references start to become a bit obtrusive. Later on in the movie we see a Magritte painting in a mansion; just so we are in no doubt about what's going on, later a close-up of the title plate beneath the painting (La Belle Captive - after Rene Magritte); Postcards of the painting start turning up; objects from the painting; then general Magrittean objects - the dressing gown, people in bowler hats; finally we're told that slippers are all about fetishism and that we are all fetishists, OK! We get it Mr Robbe-Grillet, you were inspired by Magritte, enough already, use your own cinematic language.

Obviously because the movie is a dream (or a dream within a dream, or even a dream within a dream within a dream) there is an attempt at the uncanny. Two attempts were slightly elephantine, a man with a bicycle talking to our hero starts wheeling it around in circles and jerking it mid-conversation. Furthremore Sara Zeitgeist keeps her motorcycle in her bedroom. Somehow these attempts remain compelling even though the seams are showing.

Just when you think the movie is breaking records for advertent references, we have Edouard Manet's The Execution of Emperor Maximilien introduced. Not just once, no because that would be discreet, Monsieur Robbe-Grillet carries it further. We even find at the end of the movie that our hero lives in the Rue Edouard Manet, zut alors!

So how does the film succeed? In my opinion the theory of the film is very Magrittean, what we have is art totally divorced from ideology, and divorced from the everyday, from vital necessity. What it provides is a frame for looking at the essential condition of the individual human, what they perceive, what they cannot perceive. Marie-Ange is an enigma, in a way in which every woman must be to some extent to men who view them through the lens of sexual objectification (witness the scene where the group of aristocrats attempt to buy Marie-Ange from Walter). Character/objects in Magritte's world are alienated, unknowable, I think this lexicography is related to his mother's suicide, and his attempts to understand the event. We must applaud Robbe-Grillet for finding in Magritte ideas about perception that very neatly dovetail with his own themes about memory and obsession.

In the film there is a commentary on how we attempt to know people. When we meet people we attempt to find out their names, their background, and their profession. In my opinion in this process we fundamentally miss the point, and bypass any way of meaningfully understand what is individual about the person we talk to. Marie-Ange is reluctant to tell Walter her name, reluctant that he experience anything about her except what is before his own eyes. She is shown later in the movie bound with a golden chain on which is a plate where we see printed her name, as if she has been bound up by the way in which people seek to identify her. Because of the way in which males view Marie-Ange we might say that there is a very feminist aspect to the film (if it was less knowing it would be male chauvinism). Some of the film fails moderately, the ending for me is slightly absurd, in that like many other parts of the movie it is overstated. An attempt to view the dreams of Walter by Professor van de Reeves produces some very clumsy thinking. Magritte's images, which are from a readily reused lexicon (bowler hat, apple, forest, etc) are more symbolic than something universal that everyone might actually see in their dreams.

People who are not interested in the theory of perception or Magritte, or even the nature of memory can still find things to like in this movie. Sara Zeitgeist, is beautiful, a modish biker clad all in leather with lace frills bursting out at the bust and the cuffs, her body wed to the gleaming chrome of her motorcycle. (I don't know whether its a deliberate reference, but her name Zeitgeist is perhaps a word that symbolises the opposite of Magritte's and Robbe-Grillet's interests, theirs is a logic out of place and time, concerned with what is essential to being a biological perceiving human. It is therefore not uninteresting that she is presented as the angel of death.) There is also the music which is quite good, especially in the bar scene at the start of the movie (produced feelings of ecstasy in me). Not to mention the titillation provided.

I give it 10/10, because it goes against doxa, but someone more objective might rebel against the heavy-handedness, and the majority will mistakenly find the movie pretentious. If you're looking to compare it to Marienbad, here we have a much more original, layered, and thought-provoking movie, but it is nowhere near as polished.