La Belle Captive - Olive Films (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: France, 1983
Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Writers: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Frank Verpillat
Cast: Daniel Mesguich, Cyrielle Clair, Daniel Emilfork, François Chaumette, Gabrielle Lazure

Release Date: January 20th, 2015
Approximate Running Time: 88 Minutes 25 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD Mono French
Subtitles: English
Region Coding: Region A
Retail Price: OOP

"After encountering a mysterious woman (Gabrielle Lazure) at a smoke-filled nightclub, secret agent Walter Raim (Daniel Mesguich) finds the woman lying bound and semi-conscious on a country road. He takes her to an isolated mansion, where a group of mysterious men have gathered. In the morning, Walter awakens to find bite marks on his neck, and embarks on a one-man crusade to unravel the mystery. But his detective work is thwarted by leather-clad, motorcycle-riding femme fatale Sara Zeitgeist (Cyrielle Clair), who commands a squad of black-shirted goons to keep Walter from attaining the object of his quest." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.25/5

La Belle Captive comes on a 25 GB single layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 21.6 GB

Feature: 20.5 GB

No information is provided about this transfer’s source. The source used for this transfer is in great shape. Flesh tones look correct, colors are nicely saturated, image clarity, black levels, and compression are strong throughout, and there does not appear to be any digital noise reduction.

Audio: 4.25/5

This release comes with one audio option, a DTS-HD mono mix in French with removable English subtitles. The audio sounds clean, clear, and balanced. Range-wise, this audio track sounds very good.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a theatrical trailer (3 minutes 10 seconds, Dolby Digital mono French with removable English subtitles).

Summary:

An unnamed organization asks a man named Walter to deliver a letter to Henri de Corinthe. Along the way, he encounters a mysterious woman who is bound and lying in the middle of the road. From there, he takes the semi-conscious injured woman to a mansion, where a group of sinister-looking men are having some sort of gathering. Though reluctant at first, Walter is able to get one of the men to help him with the injured woman. This man then leads them upstairs to a room, and he locks the door after he leaves the room. Now alone with the woman, he starts to see things that should not be possible, like her freeing herself from the chains that bound her hand and her clothes miraculously removing themselves. Slowly, the mysterious woman draws Walter into her web of seduction. When he wakes up in the morning, she has disappeared into thin air, and all he has left to remember her by are the bite marks that she left on his neck. What does all of this mean? Will he finally discover the truth once he deciphers all of the clues, or was his encounter with her a figment of his imagination?

Inspiration for La Belle Captive comes from two primary sources. The first source of inspiration is Belgian surrealist René Magritte, and the second source is Louis Feuillade, a French filmmaker whose notable films include Fantômas, Les Vampires, and Judex.

Content-wise, La Belle Captive is equal parts Neo Noir and psychological horror film. The Neo Noir side resides mostly in the visuals, while the psychological horror elements manifest themselves in the form of a seductress named Marie-Ange, the woman that Walter discovers bound and semi-conscious in the idleness of the road. This character's potency lies in the fact that she is an enigma due to her lack of communication. And because of her ambiguity, her true indemnity is never fully exposed. Is she a vampire, is she an angel, or is she the grim reaper?

Once again, Alain Robbe-Grillet works with a fractured narrative that focuses on cerebral and sexual themes. The mainstay of the narrative is its constant revisiting of the protagonists’ observations and their suspicions. Imagery, music, and dialog are repeated to the point that it becomes impossible to differentiate between what one thinks that they have seen or what one suspects that they may have experienced. And nowhere is this more evident than in the finale.

Needless to say, anyone expecting anything that even remotely resembles what has since become accepted as the conventional way of telling a story should look elsewhere, while those with a more adventurous cinema palette are sure to thoroughly enjoy La Belle Captive.

La Belle Captive gets a strong audio/video presentation from Olive Films, recommended.

Written by Michael Den Boer