Ep. 233: Christine Smallwood on Chantal Akerman and La Captive

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week a new book on Chantal Akerman by Christine Smallwood enters the world, a volume about Akerman’s wholly original Proust adaptation La Captive that’s the latest in the Fireflies Press series of Decadent Editions focused on films of the 2000s. So I was delighted to speak with Smallwood about Akerman and her film's hypnotic exploration of the strange relationship between a wealthy odd young man Simon (Stanislas Mehrar) and his lover, Ariane (Sylvie Testud), reworking the fifth volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Note: The episode opens with a passage about La Captive from Smallwood’s book.

Smallwood is the author of the novel The Life of the Mind and a regular contributor to publications such as The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Bookforum and The New York Times Magazine. La Captive will screen March 30 at Metrograph followed by Vertigo, with Smallwood in person. On March 19 at Light Industry, she’ll present an illustrated lecture adapted from her book.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass