Christine Smallwood explores Chantal Akerman’s adaptation of Marcel Proust’s The Prisoner, the fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time, in a text that moves elegantly between Akerman’s films, Proust’s novel, and Smallwood’s own life.
‘Christine Smallwood creates both a portrait of Akerman and her films – the most illuminating I’ve read – and a portrait of herself.’ Joanna Hogg
‘Smallwood’s La Captive is a delightful, engrossing book. Her study of Chantal Akerman’s film is profound, entwining Akerman’s and Proust’s resonant themes: mothers and daughters and sons, love and loss, passion and passivity, freedom, obsession, and time. A beautiful, masterful work that miraculously marries art to life, life to art.’ Lynne Tillman