La Captive

Akerman returns to top form with this strange but compelling version of Proust's La Prisonnière. Set in (just about) modern-day Paris, it charts the effects of the festering jealousy felt by wealthy young Simon towards his seemingly innocent and defenceless lover Ariane, whom he keeps cooped up in their apartment lest her occasional forays outside for singing lessons tempt her into (improbable) sexual escapades with her girlfriends. Pared in the Bressonian manner, but inflected with an almost operatic intensity, the film transcends/eschews naturalism to create an almost timeless parable about the deadeningly obsessive/possessive perversities of many male-female relationships. The use of Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead is particularly effective.