The Beautiful Prisoner

LA BELLE CAPTIVE may be Robbe-Grillet's most entertaining and accomplished film. It dazzles the eye by creating a series of secret encounters inspired by Magritte's surrealist painting, which the director named his film after. You don't have to know anything about art to enjoy this film, though. Motifs from vampire films and erotic thrillers are interwoven with more hermetic scenes, but it's somehow all held together by the repeated image of a black clad woman riding a motorcycle. The central situation of a man on a mysterious sexual mission and some individual scenes bear a striking resemblance to Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (1999).

Stiff, humourless fantasy in which a chap gets sucked into a surreal nightmare after meeting a woman in a nightclub and finding her dead on the road shortly after. You can sense the writer-director desperately trying to strip away the ordinary meaning of things, only to inadvertently reinforce them by means of allusion and connotation, of which the film is largely comprised, as there's little original here. Much of it seems to be a nod to Melville, with our despondent hero being some kind of secret agent in a raincoat.

It's a game that feels as though it's being made up as it goes along - the girl's a ghost, no she isn't, it was all a dream, no it wasn't - the only interesting thing is the auteur's ulterior motive in making the film. Clearly you can't trust reality, or your idea of it - the ultimate paranoia. If that's it, it's simplistic, and unfortunately it's none too amusing or entertaining, apart from the chick on the bike. Surrealism being some decades past its sell-by date at this point, the sense is of Robbe-Grillet having his finger on the pulse of a cadaver.

Very much like Alain Robbe-Grillet's other films in its fractured narrative, sexual and psychological preoccupations, and sense of ambiguity, except it's appallingly poor when compared to the tremendously entertaining "Trans-Europ-Express" and the fever-dream S&M world of "Eden and After". This is a film which like some of Godard's lesser work mistakes making references to art and intellectuals for actual substance, except Robbe-Grillet is no Godard and hence could never possibly have pulled off making a film which featured his own filmic language in spite of including countless references to the work of others. "La belle captive" is like poorly-shot, cheap version of a David Lynch film, and just about the only good thing I can say about it is that it made me feel like watching "Eyes Wide Shut" again. Sadly, the headache this piece of crap gave me will make doing that less enjoyable.

" - Je me sentais vide, translucide, pas à ma place parmi ces faux danseurs..." It is no obligation and artistic freedom that apply. Stylized and elevated. Et profondément français. As in the theatre. The French theatre. Where the feminine is presented and handled as objects. Often admirable objects. Naked. Even when fully clothed. While the masculine populace strolls among these things, values and penetrates. And seeks support and acceptance in the male environment. A French formula that we in the audience proudly accepts.

"La belle captive" is a play with the possibilities of cinematography. I bet it stands on David Lynch's most valued shelf. Because the film is practically a model for "Twin Peaks". As it has become an important inspiration for the Lynch-era 1986-1999.

Alain Robbe-Grillet writes like very few others. But his imagery/metaphorical language is surprisingly lame. Sometimes even awkward. And on top of that, using a narrator's voice ... There are a bouquet of scenes in "La belle captive" that are deeply unforgettable. And the film breeds analysis and reflection. Still, it's just a game. A distraction. " - I felt empty, translucent, out of place among these fake dancers..." "In his seminal collection of essays, Pour un Nouveau Roman, Alain Robbe-Grillet launched a polemic against the dominant, realist literary mode characterized by the absolute time of linear chronology moving to create related event and causality and to fulfill a destiny. [...] The role of Balzacian absolute time was to arouse emotion by creating suspense and to provide the psychological satisfactions of meaning, resolution, and closure in a world considered objective, concrete, but nonetheless in the image of man who projected himself and his meanings by analogy and metaphor on the environment. (Raylene L. Ramsay)

This has a little style and some flair and a modicum of interest but in the main it is pretentious tosh without hardly any justification for watching it. It is neither erotically visually exciting or intellectually involving, both of which I am sure it was supposed to be. It is never a good sign when bits of footage are repeated time and again and usually seem a very crude way of making a point or just a way to pad out a very thin story. Did I say 'story'? Now don't get me wrong I don't demand a story but if I am presented with a rather verbose storyline that goes nowhere, I can get a bit fidgety. There are good moments in this and one or two nice shots but there are far too many meaningless shots of the waves and a motorbike. Last Year at Marienbad, can seem slow but it is also poetic and utterly involving, the same cannot be said of this I am afraid.