La Captive

by Christine Smallwood

In the fifth published title of the Decadent Editions series, Christine Smallwood explores Chantal Akerman’s adaptation of Marcel Proust’s The Prisoner, the fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time, in a text that moves elegantly between Akerman’s films, Proust’s novel, and Smallwood’s own life.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, France

192 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2024

Reviews

[Celine Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sublime essay by one of my favorite literary critics—about a film adaptation of my least favorite Proust volume. For such a famous novel, there are surprisingly few adaptations of it. As Smallwood writes,

Movie history is haunted by Proust adaptations that never came to be. Actor and producer Nicole Stéphane spent twenty-one years trying to find a director to take him on. 'I wrote to the lady-producer that no real filmmaker would allow himself to squeeze the madeleine as though it were a lemon and in my opinion only a film butcher would have the nerve to put Proust through the mincer, was François Truffaut's response. Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette and Louis Malle also passed. Luchino Visconti wrote a script and located a château (he was planning to cast Alain Delon as Marcel, Brigite Bardot as Odette, Charlotte Rampling as Albertine and Marlon Brando as Charlus) but when Stéphane asked for more time to raise the five billion lire the four-hour film required, Visconti either dropped the idea or died; both versions have been reported. Harold Pinter wrote a script that Joseph Losey was supposed to direct, but nothing came of it. It is said that Godard wanted to film Proust; he never did. In 1984, Volker Schlöndorff directed Swann in Love, a swoony adaptation of the first volume that would not be out of place on Masterpiece Theatre. No serious critics praise Swann in Love –it seems to exist only to prove the unadaptability of Proust – but I like it. I like the clothes and the interiors. I like Jeremy Irons as Charles Swann, the man obsessed with Odette, the courtesan who is, famously, not even his type. Schlöndorff's direction is riddled with clichés; then again, so is love.

It feels like a loss that we do not have Truffaut's Proust, or Rivette's, or those films by Resnais, Losey or Visconti. But if we had them, we might not have La Captive.

Proust's La Captive/La Prisonnière is claustrophically inert; its central concern is the protagonist's jealousy and possessiveness over his lover Albertine (one of literature's most memorable bisexual characters). Akerman's adaptation depicts this beautifully; scenes are shot in clearly delinated, contained spaces: hallways, richly colored bedrooms, inside luxurious cars. Smallwood's essay on Akerman's adaptation, in turn (we're now two degrees removed from Proust, though it's worth saying that Proust, given his obsession with involuntary memory, often seemed to be two degrees removed from himself) offers gorgeous textual renderings of Akerman's filmography.

Smallwood's essay is shot through with stories of her own life, too—something that Goodreads reviewers seem mixed (okay, many of them are unhappy) about. But I like it. I like that Smallwood doesn't flinch away from writing about money, and motherhood, and the drudgery and indignity and labor of it—and that makes her the perfect critic for Akerman, whose celebrated Jeanne Dielman rigorously and unsparingly depicted all these things. Akerman understands that money—earning it, saving it, spending it—characterizes life just as much as making art does, and that it, therefore, can be the subject of artistic work as well.

The other thing that Smallwood often writes about is time. I keep on thinking about her essay in The Yale Review two summers ago, 'A Reviewer's Life,' where Smallwood observes:

Of course, the money one is paid to write a piece is one of the material constraints that shapes the work of criticism. Word rates have not increased in decades, while the cost of living goes up every year.…It is impossible to know what ideas never came into the world because someone couldn’t or wouldn’t accept an hourly rate that barely covers the babysitter.

Smallwood's essay on Akerman made it into the world, but I have to imagine it was a struggle. Towards the end of the essay, Smallwood writes—

Now we are getting to the end of things. The school day is almost over and I need to get to the end quicker…Time did not stop for this essay. It passed straight through it.

—and this, too, feels very much in the spirit of Akerman. I felt irresistibly enchanted and absorbed by this essay, which is both explicitly about Akerman—her biography, her family, her filmography, her mother's death, her own suicide shortly after—and implicitly about all the themes that Akerman depicted, film after film after film.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chantal and Marcel, the perfect couple. I really enjoyed reading this little book, but still a wonderful study on both Proust and Akerman.

[rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

às vezes, vale a pena viver só para poder ler livros como este

[Choah · Rating 3 out of 5]

[2.5] Decently intellectual but annoyingly affected. I am not a fan of its pithy rhizomatic associations, half-baked questions in parentheses that she tries to pass as analyses. Nor the non-sequiturs about her kids. Or the self-pity about having to finish writing the essay to deliver on the grant funding she applied for and won. Carried mostly by quotes of Proust and Proust scholars and descriptions of scenes from the film and Akerman’s life. Compared to something like the book from Decadent Editions about Hong Sang Soo’s ‘Tale of Cinema,’ this hardly passes for substantial writing on film.

[coffee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author says she only got paid $2,000 for this book, which explains why she writes as such.. Grouchy asides (“I have tried to not hate Chantal Akerman or her film La Captive, even as I have come to hate writing this essay.”) and half baked musings (“is your mother still your mother after you fall asleep?”)

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 3 out of 5]

One in a mostly very interesting series on films of the 2000s, here on Chantal Akerman's very loose Proust adaptation. Here there's a great deal about motherhood, which connects very neatly to Akerman in general but atypically little to this particular film about an appalling relationship between very young people; there's also not nearly enough about said film's completely deranged soundtrack.

[kelly]

bought my copy at eye film museum in amsterdam <3

in the opening pages, smallwood explicitly states that they've come to hate writing this essay and unfortunately it shows... i don't think layering the analysis with anecdotes from smallwood's experience of the pandemic really worked, although i enjoyed the tidbits about proust throughout.

[Dylan Kiewel · Rating 4 out of 5]

good to finally read this. i recall listening to smallwood talking about it on the film comment podcast while splayed out in the bloom of spring in a park in philly almost two years ago. love this series but boy are they rolling these out slow! watched the movie at the time and felt cold about it but feel more ready now. not sure i am ready for proust though.

[lol licious · Rating 4 out of 5]

fluid & dreamlike, like akerman's original work. draws connections between life, proust, and akerman beautifully.

[lostoyster: chili · Rating 3 out of 5]

< 3 I love chantal's la captive (2000) but this book (cutesy & at times annoying without sufficient analytical rigor) doesn't quite do it justice...

[Aura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Luettu lentokoneessa Brysseliin

[Hugo Santos]

é so okay