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

  (Credited 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

Color:

Color (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)

Last Year at Skinemax

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.