La belle captive

Alain Robbe-Grillet, in his post-MARIENBAD career, has made a decent living for himself combining his structuralist maze-narratives with skin, guns, black leather, trapezes and motorcycles. In short he has managed to wedge one of the artiest of art-movie genres into the Erotic Thriller shelf of your local video store. (But don't expect to see any Robbe-Grillets there soon.) Before a dismal tail-off (it was all a dream! or was it? no, it was! or was it?) Robbe-Grillet manages to solder together a pleasing array of rhymes, repetitions, hangovers, frames-within-frames, and other toylike devices which he wisely powers with High Surrealist fuel: dreamlike sexual obsessiveness. The first twenty minutes or so of LA BELLE CAPTIVE combine story elements from EYES WIDE SHUT and KISS ME DEADLY--a winning combination (and one that suggests more that Robbe-Grillet read Schnitzler's "Traumnovelle" than that Kubrick jacked Robbe-Grillet's conception). As always in Robbe-Grillet, the combination of elegant, "meaningless," self-referential puzzling with lurid, charged material makes for a powerful experience--Andre Breton 2.0. Too bad that, unlike his late, masterly THE BLUE VILLA (still shamefully undistributed), LA BELLE CAPTIVE cops out so shamefully. One must now acknowledge, after LA BELLE CAPTIVE, Antonioni's IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN, EYES WIDE SHUT and MULHOLLAND DRIVE, that the Cheesy Erotic Thriller is now the dominant paradigm of the Western art film.

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.

Everything in this film is blurred and everything is ambiguous and shaky. The main character, Walter Raim, who is, or probably isn't, some kind of secret service agent, meets, or probably doesn't meet, a beautiful and strange woman. And everything what's happening probably isn't happening at all and after every episode he tries to understand, did it happen or not and if it really did happen then what was it? But slowly and inexorably everything moves to the finish which is as incredible as all the occurrences in this picturesque drama. While so many films are adapted from a certain story The Beautiful Prisoner is based on the paintings by René François Ghislain Magritte and is as much surrealistic with the same striking shift of reality. On the side of the visual art this film is simply fantastic.

" - 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)

As if the very broken, uncertain reality of the picture weren't enough, the repetition of shots and scenes and pointedly disjointed sequencing only increase the difficulty of the viewing experience. A complete story is told more or less, but cohesiveness and coherence are variable, and purposefully so. Substantial mystery, with dashes of the supernatural and erotic scattered throughout, is considerably deepened with a guiding ethos for both film-making and storytelling that I can only describe as avant-garde. Comparisons come to mind in one capacity or another, including the works of David Lynch and in some measure Terry Gilliam, but with material such as this comparisons don't mean much after a certain point. I can earnestly say that I enjoyed watching 'La belle captive,' and I think it's worth watching on its own merits in every regard. I also readily admit that if asked I couldn't possibly give a meaningful summary. Mark this without question as a title that will appeal only to those keen on all the wide, weird possibilities of what cinema has to offer.

Whatever one is able to make of the narrative, such as it is, it's fascinating in and of itself and definitely in its abstruseness. All those characteristics that make the experience trying from the very start - some may reasonably say "inscrutable" - are great fun to tease apart, if we can, and one way or another the feature is filled with terrific ideas; say what one will of the plot, the scene writing is outstanding in its robust flavors. Fine a credit as this is for Alain Robbe-Grillet as both director and especially writer, editor Bob Wade had his work cut out for him to assemble the film into a very particular shape, and he did a fantastic job, and much the same can be said for the sound department. The production design and art direction are truly superb, giving the movie an imaginative look and feel, and the hair, makeup, and costume design are just as excellent as those stunts and effects that are employed. 'La belle captive' is a wild, bizarre ride, but it's very well done across the board, quality that makes the picture as easy to digest as it feasibly could be.

It's very much a piece for a niche audience, and I would begrudge no one who engages honestly with it and dislikes it. I had a good time watching but I won't pretend to have a complete grasp of what Robbe-Grillet was intending. Even at that, the medium is perfect for taking viewers on a strange journey, and sometimes that's all a title needs to be to entertain and satisfy. Whether or not one can glean anything greater from 'La belle captive' it remains a splendid curiosity for those able and willing to abide the eccentricity, and a fine way to spend ninety minutes - so long as one bears in mind that it requires active engagement.