The Captive (2000)

Dreadfully Boring

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Modern day adaptation of a section of Proust's magnum opus that is true enough to the book in its theme and events and interestingly has the Marcel character still sunk in an archaic, aristocratic world.KD Lang lookalike Stanislas Merhar does a good job doing the insulated, emotional (and physical) frailty, trapped in an adolescent infatuation of towering poetic naivety, all the while consumed with jealousy by the suspicion that his live-in girlfriend is an active lesbian behind his back.It's slow. There's a lot of prowling around his creaking Paris apartment, lots of talking in cars - we seem to be taking entire journeys in real time. Akerman gave herself an easy directing job. The use of classical music is lazy - Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata is suitably Proustian, but Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead is absurdly melodramatic, especially when played incongruously, Godard-fashion, over serene images.Those familiar with the writer and director can easily pull back the gauze to reveal the real issues - an inverted couple struggling to maintain a hetero relationship - but that is so superficial it hardly seems worth special effort and the film works better with the ambiguity in place (as intended), with the implication that naivety (misunderstanding, confusion) is at the root of jealous passion. The Marcel character is so naïve that in the sex scenes he doesn't even know that he is supposed to put it in - doing the movements without getting undressed (he's in bed in his overcoat in one scene). That was strangely tragic, and although it may have been a stylisation to symbolise their failure to connect, it was easier to take it literally.With liberties like that though, and done so earnestly, it's craves some indulgence. The worst problem is that the girl is comatose and unattractive, showing nothing of Albertine's sprightliness and guile that gave that character her painful duplicity. The ending too is a disappointment.

As a film student, I have to watch a wide variety of films, both good and bad. This has to rate as the worst film on the first year of my course, and one of the worst films ever made.If you like your drama to be slightly slower than normal, then this may be for you, but even those who appreciate thought provoking over action will still be bored senseless by this absolute tripe.I have never seen a film slower than this one. The largely static camera barely helps, admittedly an intentional move, but I doubt intended to bore us that much.Yes this film sucks, and you'll be wishing the lead character would drive his car off the road, just to make it end.My Rating: 1/10

Even though I went to see the movie with great expectations, I didn't like the movie at all!!. I thought it was boring as it could be and except from the photography, everything else was worse than mediocre!! I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone!

Oh, my God. I can't believe so bad movie it can be made. Bad directed, bad written, bad cinematographered. The whole thing is garbage. After 112 minutes watching, I got nothing but one man and one woman. I can't imagine anything that the director want to tell. I really hate the movie. If you haven't watch it, do not take it. It's really bad.