“I prefer the truth even if it hurts. Yet all you give me are half-truths when you know I’ll find out anyway. ”

‘The Captive’, directed by Chantal Akerman in 2000, is a French psychodrama starring Stanislas Merhar and Sylvie Testud as a pair of lovers with an abusive and toxic relationship. Testud plays Ariane, a woman who, throughout the film, endures the surveillance and control of her boyfriend Simon, played by Merhar. Simon is obsessed with the idea that Ariane is having an affair and follows her as she meets her friends. Consumed with jealousy, Simon eventually demands that she leaves, but is torn and immediately recants his decision. Eventually, the pair find themselves in a hotel on the coast, where finally Ariane finds a way to break free from her abusive boyfriend. Like Akerman’s other movies, such as ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ and ‘Les Rendez-vous d’Anna’, there is a remoteness and a psychological minimalism in this film. Much of the action takes place between the two characters and their emotions are buttoned down to the point of impassivity. This makes the scenario, the abusive relationship, even more intense.  There’s also the theme of voyeurism, but here it is more direct. With ‘Jeanne Dielman’ and ‘Les Rendez-vous d’Anna’, we are the voyeurs, the camera following the daily rituals of Dielman or the travels of Anne Silver, here the voyeur operates on two levels, through Akerman’s camera and through the character of Simon. There is something uncomfortable about this film, not in what it shows but in the ways the characters react to the small moments of creepy and unhealthy paranoia that Simon displays.

Would I recommend it? I’ve grown to love Akerman, although nothing has beaten ‘Jeanne Dielman’ for me. This film is close to being a horror movie, creeping and psychologically unsettling. Watch in a double bill with ‘Harry, He’s Here to Help’, a film with similar obsessive themes.