In The Captive, inspired by La Prisonnière, Akerman has made an original reading of Proust, one that places her (and, we have to think, Proust) in a continuum with the great French filmmakers Bresson and Resnais. In a once-glamorous Paris flat whose ancient hallways and corners the camera ingeniously traverses for their secrets (à la Resnais), a wealthy young man, Simon (Stanislas Merhar), lives with his grandmother and his kept mistress Ariane (Sylvie Testud), isolated from society by his pollen allergies, writer's block, and distracting obsessions. Ariane comes and goes, escorted by a friend to a society of women whose company and love she clearly prefers. Yet she keeps returning (with Bressonian interiority and self-centeredness) to his chaste love and his punishingly jealous, if funny, voyeuristic desire to know her. The film is quietly masterful in posing questions it doesn't hope to answer concerning the nature of desire and obsession. The gender-neutral English title best captures the central mystery-between Simon and Ariane, who is the captive, who the keeper?

The Captive also screens on Friday, March 19.