The title is taken from a René Magritte painting of a sea scene that features a picture frame isolating a section of the shoreline within the frame--a lesson about the unreality of artistic reality one Walter (Daniel Mesguich) is about to learn for himself. He's just spent a drunken night interacting and apparently striking out with a gorgeous, effervescent blonde (Gabrielle Lazure) who refuses to tell him her name. But after he's been given a mission by his leather-clad dominatrix-style boss, Sara Zeitgeist (Cyrielle Claire), he discovers the girl from the bar bound and bleeding in the street. Rushing to the nearest mansion to telephone for help, he's introduced to a roster of creepy rich men straight out of Eyes Wide Shut--only to be ushered into a room where the girl makes love to him. Whereupon he wakes up in the mansion (now destroyed) with no girl and no clue as to what happened.

The girl turns out to have a name, and a history, but unfortunately for Walter he's got to depend on other people to deliver that information; the unreliability of any narrator is the motor for the wonderful/horrible confusions that beleaguer our befuddled hero. At any given moment, the mystery woman could be recently kidnapped or long dead, while the various parties involved in her disappearance could appear as master-tormentors to impede his pursuit or feed him new information to spur him on. Thus, the film evokes Magritte's painting--which, like his famous "The Treachery of Images" (and its pipe that's not a pipe), shows how a fictive space is not reality and yet is so easy to mistake for reality. Walter depends on real-life cause-and-effect to make his story coherent, yet Robbe-Grillet won't give it to him: the hero turns out to be a representation, expertly manipulated by the false Escher perspective of the narrative.

It would be nice to say that La Belle captive always lives up to its playful mandate, but sometimes it puts its foot in it. Much of Lazure's nude and semi-nude cavorting grates with the sub-Skinemax treatment, with some scenes of her in a see-through gown being too ridiculous to describe here. Suffice it to say, it's somehow not of a piece with the finely-tuned series of misdirections that dominates the rest of the film. (The dreamlike state of the movie itself is almost shattered when it is proposed that it might really be a dream.) Still, La Belle captive is quite enjoyable on its own Möbius-loop terms--and never once does it demand that you take it seriously, instead merely asking you to submit to its perceptual havoc in the name of pleasure and in the hope that you'll find your own way in (and out).

1.66:1 DVD capture: La Belle captive

Koch Lorber's DVD presentation is a mild disappointment. The lack of 16x9-enhancement would be more forgiveable if the 1.66:1 image weren't found wanting in most other respects. Although it's a far cry from unwatchable, it's rife with edge haloes, ghosting colours, and detail-less blacks. Were it a bootleg as opposed to a retail copy, I'd be perfectly happy with it. The DD 2.0 audio is likewise serviceable but difficult to savour. The film's French trailer plus trailers for La moustache, Un Coeur en hiver, and Changing Times round out the disc.-Travis Mackenzie Hoover

© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
85 minutes
MPAA
Not Rated
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.66:1 ONLY
Languages
French Mono
CC
No
Subtitles
English (optional)
DVD-5
Region Zero
Koch Lorber

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Published: February 20, 2008