DVD Review: The Captive (2014)

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Meditations on loss both literal and figurative, the haunting yet humanistic films of Academy Award nominated writer-director Atom Egoyan are hard to shake.

As an audience of Alices ― in each puzzle-like picture we tumble through the rabbit hole ― landing headfirst in a contemporary but illusive Egoyan wonderland where we're quick to discover that nothing is as it seems.

Illuminating if ultimately unsettling, from The Sweet Hereafter to Felicia's Journey and beyond, Egoyan has spent his career holding up a microscope to the dangers that exist just below the surface of a world where smiles hide secrets and (much like objects in the rearview mirror) evil may be closer than it appears.

As the years go by, in Egoyan's latest aptly named effort The Captive, a heartbroken father played by Ryan Reynolds finds himself unable to look ahead ― literally and figuratively trapped in the past ― after discovering with a glance in his rearview that his nine year old daughter had vanished from sight.

Moving back and forth from past to present and in point-of-view, The Captive's maze-like narrative approach initially infuriates more than it fascinates.

Requiring us to figure out where each piece fits along the timeline while we struggle to process each scene ― we're introduced to multiple parties held captive by the same horrific moment, beginning with the kidnapped girl (who’s now an adult) as well as her captor who for years has been hiding in plain sight of both her parents and the police.

With this in mind it's no wonder that when the film screened at the Cannes Film Festival for its Palme d'Or qualifying showing, Egoyan's opus appeared under a title that emphasized the plural nature of its theme (as Un Captives) to better illustrate the grief of all involved.

Yet while it works either way, the singular name change suits the film well in not only ratcheting up the tension and immediacy but also by encouraging greater critical thinking on the part of the audience as we evaluate each captive one by one.

As a modern disciple of Hitchcock whose experimentation with the role of the viewer as voyeur has overwhelmed the Egyptian-born Canadian filmmaker's work since his American arthouse crossover hit Exotica roughly twenty years ago, Egoyan is clever enough to understand that in suspenseful storytelling, the true power comes from what isn't shown vs. what is visualized.

And this is especially imperative given the delicate subject matter of Captive which, to both the film as well as Egoyan's credit, feels far less exploitative than a typical episode of network television police procedural series.

Revisiting the same terrain he's explored throughout his undeniably eerie oeuvre including the complex and at times codependent relationship of good and evil that varies considerably from one film to the next, Captive plays particularly well as a thematic companion piece to Felicia's Journey.

While both films feel like updates on age-old fairy tales – echoing everything from Little Red Riding Hood to Hansel and Gretel to the aforementioned allusions to Alice in Wonderland, this time around he uses the cinematic looking glass to examine the role that storytelling plays on its own accord.

Trading in twisted role-play and dark storytelling on the deep web, we learn how a narrative can mean different things to different people.

However, unlike the way that the titular Felicia's Journey was placed in the hands of someone else, The Captive shows us in a variety of ways how words can keep not only hope but people alive as two of its characters make the choice to use the power of their stories to rescue themselves, whether or not they're in control in their current state.

A stronger execution of the same argument that he attempted to make in Chloe, although it’s structurally still something of a mess, The Captive grows bolder and more confident with time, resulting in one of Egoyan's most thrilling climaxes in years.

Nonetheless, the inclusion of an alternate ending on the newly released Lionsgate DVD makes you wish that he would've struck a greater balance between the two separate conclusions in order to give viewers a stronger sense of closure regarding one key subplot in particular.

Bolstered by its script as well as stellar support from Ryan Reynolds in an uncharacteristically serious turn ― despite its shortcomings, the film reminds viewers once again just how criminally underutilized he is in traditional leading man roles.

Intelligently crafted and undeniably suspenseful, like all of Egoyan's work, The Captive will linger in the mind for days.

   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Chloe (2010)

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With a compelling and provocative screenplay from Secretary scribe Erin Cressida Wilson inspired by Coco Before Chanel and The Girl From Monaco director Anne Fontaine's 2003 work Nathalie, Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan debuts his first directorial effort for which he did not also complete the script via Chloe.

And much like Egoyan and Wilson, we quickly discover that our eponymous lead portrayed by Amanda Seyfried who was cast before her breakout smash hit Mamma Mia! also has quite a way with words as a high class escort who looks like she's stepped out of an old Veronica Lake film, perched on barstools at Toronto hotels to catch her next cash-only paycheck.

Yet while Chloe is traditionally chatted up by men and sometimes couples, it's rare indeed when a woman she'd had a brief encounter with as polite strangers conversing in a restroom shows up shortly thereafter not only willing to buy Chloe a glass of Chardonnay but also hire her to attempt to seduce her husband, whom the woman suspects has been cheating on her.

The mysterious client in question is the successful gynecologist Dr. Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore in a role Wilson wrote with the actress in mind) who finds a trail of suspicious breadcrumbs surrounding her opera professor husband David (Liam Neeson). The evidence Catherine uncovers includes a purposely missed flight, a cell phone camera snapshot with one of his adoring coeds, his inclination to be friendly with female strangers to the level of flirtation and of course the way he'll suddenly close a chat box window on his computer whenever Catherine walks into his home office.

While she's had trouble in her relationship with her son who flaunts his sexuality and desire for freedom in front of her due to a disappointingly dropped subplot that you only discover in the Sony Blu-ray's deleted scenes, the threat that perhaps the other man in her life may be distancing himself from her as well sends Catherine reeling.

Accepting the good doctor's offer, Chloe “presents” herself to David in a series of encounters she shares in explicit detail with Catherine at local coffee houses or bars in the Toronto neighborhood. Although at first she shies away from certain aspects of Chloe's show-and-tell soon we realize that she may be finding some unique thrill in the arrangement whether it's in the manipulation, the eroticism of words and the images they call up, or in learning something completely new about a man whom she felt she understood better than anyone.

And admittedly Egoyan's film does begin to require a little more suspension of disbelief than perhaps we'd had in mind as a series of escalating plot twists are introduced including the dubious, voyeuristic first which is revealed in the spoiler-heavy trailer that may lose some of the audience for its slight leap in logic that seems designed to titillate more than make perfect narrative sense. However, if you're willing to meander along with the fledgling middle act, the payoff is well worth the patience that at times both the character of Chloe and the film requires.

Likewise it's destined to make you ruminate over everything you've just seen for at least the next twenty-four hours and perhaps cause you to share the movie with an unsuspecting friend or lover to see if they're just as taken in by the complicated web Wilson and Egoyan weave throughout.

Chloe, which looks breathtakingly luscious in this first rate Blu-ray transfer, takes the carnal love triangles cherished by Adrian Lyne and Paul Verhoeven into far more mature and intellectually demanding territory. Featuring a first rate turn by Seyfried who, up to this point I'd basically underrated given the roles that are usually sent her way, Chloe is similarly a work you don't want to pigeonhole as simply an erotic thriller going in from square one.

While again it won't probably sink in until long after the credits roll, Chloe has a lot to say about gender dynamics, trust, and the way that storytelling or more specifically words themselves can have as much of a profoundly stirring effect on an individual as the right clip in long hair left down to attract a woman's next client... or spouse.


Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.