La captive (The Captive/The Prisoner) is a 2000 film from Belgium directed by Chantal Akerman.
Simon and Ariane are two young Francophone Belgians in a peculiar relationship. Simon is possessive of Ariane to an extreme degree, usually following her around whenever she goes out, and getting her friends to tell him what Ariane did whenever he can't watch her himself. She seems to have little problem with this relationship, even occasionally subtly goading him, like when she lies to him about an invitation to a reception that is in her purse.
Simon cannot free himself of his fixations and eventually comes to believe that she is cheating on him with women. While he is a very strange man, he isn't a violent man, so all he does is ask her to move out of his apartment. She agrees, but will Simon be able to give up control?
Bérénice Bejo plays Sarah, one of Ariane's friends.
Tropes:
- Control Freak: He isn't violent about it, but Simon has a deep need to control Ariane every second of the day, to know where she's going and what she's doing, and even to know her thoughts. It's the fact that he can't know her thoughts that leads to him deciding to break up with her.
- Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Played with. Part of Simon's bizarre mix of pathologies is a need to have his partner pretend to be sleeping during sex—this seems to be the only way he can get it up. Ariane does this for him; he also asks a streetwalker to do it but then has her leave the car when her fake sleeping is unsatisfactory. He also tells Ariane how he likes to smell her private parts when she's sleeping. (Simon is a weird guy.)
- The Film of the Book: This movie is actually an adaptation of Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière, the fifth book in Proust's cycle In Search of Lost Time (sometimes titled in English as Remembrance of Things Past).
- Idle Rich: Simon lives in a gigantic Paris apartment and has a chauffeur, and does not appear to have any kind of job that interrupts him from following Ariane around.
- Leave the Camera Running: A hallmark of Chantal Akerman's career and a trope she uses several times in this film, like the scene where Simon sits in a bathtub and talks to Ariane. The shot runs four minutes without a cut and the camera only moves once, when Simon stands up.
- Left Hanging: Ariane goes out swimming on the beach. After a while, Simon shouts her name and goes running into the water after her. He catches up to her, and she yells in protest. The film then cuts to the last scene, a shot of Simon being brought back to shore in a motor boat—alone. What happened? Did he kill her? Did she escape him and commit Suicide by Sea?
- P.O.V. Cam: Used in the opening scene to show Simon's POV when he is driving around and following Ariane.
- Shout-Out: Ariane's opera singer friend Lea is starring in a production of Carmen, which is of course a story of a lusty woman and her violently possessive partner.
- Shower Scene: Simon is in a bathtub talking to Ariane, who eventually appears in a shower stall next to the bathtub, which is separated from the bathtub by a glass partition.
- Standard Female Grab Area: The closest Simon ever comes to violent is when he finds Ariane chit-chatting with her friends at the theater. He grabs Ariane in the standard area, namely her upper right arm, and hauls her away.
- Streetwalker: One scene starts with a Leave the Camera Running slow pan of an assortment of streetwalkers—some women, some men in drag—making come-hither gestures at the camera. It's a POV shot from Simon's point of view. He invites one hooker into his car but dismisses her when she can't fake sleep convincingly.
- Window Love: Ariane steps into a shower that is separated from Simon (who's in a bathtub) by a glass partition. He stands up and puts his hand to the glass, and she matches the gesture. It seems symbolic of how he can't connect to her in a normal way.
- Women's Mysteries: Simon is so obsessed by the things women do with each other, the feelings they have for each other, and the thoughts that they have during sex, that he quizzes a lesbian couple about what they feel during lovemaking and whether or not Ariane may think about other people when she and Simon are having sex.
