La Prisonnière

This has quite a complex plot from which we start even before Henri-Georges Clouzot stars messing with our heads... Laurent Terzieff ("Stan") is a wealthy, somewhat voyeuristic gallery owner/photographer who has oddly passionate - yet physically sterile relationships with women. Elisabeth Weiner (Josée) is a woman, married to an unfaithful artist, who becomes enthralled by Terzieff and is soon completely under his control as she tries to construct a television documentary about him and his art. There is a languor to the delivery of this story; but that lends to the wonderfully potent sense of sexual frustration; ambiguity and uncertainty. The characters are pretty unpleasant, it has to be said - especially the rather venal, ambitious husband "Gilbert" (Bernard Fresson) but that only contributes more to the essentially disturbing nature of this drama. Though clear at the start, by the rather confused (and weak, I found) conclusion we are really not too sure who is controlling whom, and why and it does rather surrender to the more basic emotions that now rob it of the intellectual "terror" it worked so hard, and cleverly, to establish. I ought to add, too, that some of the artwork featured is truly spacial, colourful and adds significantly to the mood of this work.