Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Sharkflei
Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.
Nicolas
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
Zandra
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
federovsky
Stiff, humourless fantasy in which a chap gets sucked into a surreal nightmare after meeting a woman in a nightclub and finding her dead on the road shortly after. You can sense the writer-director desperately trying to strip away the ordinary meaning of things, only to inadvertently reinforce them by means of allusion and connotation, of which the film is largely comprised, as there's little original here. Much of it seems to be a nod to Melville, with our despondent hero being some kind of secret agent in a raincoat.It's a game that feels as though it's being made up as it goes along - the girl's a ghost, no she isn't, it was all a dream, no it wasn't - the only interesting thing is the auteur's ulterior motive in making the film. Clearly you can't trust reality, or your idea of it - the ultimate paranoia. If that's it, it's simplistic, and unfortunately it's none too amusing or entertaining, apart from the chick on the bike. Surrealism being some decades past its sell-by date at this point, the sense is of Robbe-Grillet having his finger on the pulse of a cadaver.
Mal 1978
Definitely NOT for general audiences. Watch this ONLY if you're well versed in art & Director Alain Robbe-Grillet's style. For everyone else, think about how interesting a Calvin Klein commercial would be if it was extended to run ninety minutes long. Also, what if only three of the actresses in the commercial were beautiful, while everyone else was nasty looking.At first, I thought it was some sort of French private eye flick. Then, I thought it was some sort of French soft-core porn flick. Then, I thought it was a French vampire flick. Then, I thought it was some sort of psychological experiment flick. Finally, I think it turned out to be some guy's dream before the Angel of Death (his wife, naturally) comes for him. By the end, I was hoping that the Angel of Death would also come for me, too, because my mind had been hopelessly damaged by watching this high-end artistic gobbledygook.
christopher-underwood
This has a little style and some flair and a modicum of interest but in the main it is pretentious tosh without hardly any justification for watching it. It is neither erotically visually exciting or intellectually involving, both of which I am sure it was supposed to be. It is never a good sign when bits of footage are repeated time and again and usually seem a very crude way of making a point or just a way to pad out a very thin story. Did I say 'story'? Now don't get me wrong I don't demand a story but if I am presented with a rather verbose storyline that goes nowhere, I can get a bit fidgety. There are good moments in this and one or two nice shots but there are far too many meaningless shots of the waves and a motorbike. Last Year at Marienbad, can seem slow but it is also poetic and utterly involving, the same cannot be said of this I am afraid.
bobmonell
LA BELLE CAPTIVE may be Robbe-Grillet's most entertaining and accomplished film. It dazzles the eye by creating a series of secret encounters inspired by Magritte's surrealist painting, which the director named his film after. You don't have to know anything about art to enjoy this film, though. Motifs from vampire films and erotic thrillers are interwoven with more hermetic scenes, but it's somehow all held together by the repeated image of a black clad woman riding a motorcycle. The central situation of a man on a mysterious sexual mission and some individual scenes bear a striking resemblance to Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (1999).