Carol Mavor (University of Manchester)
Blue is the Colour of Impossible Mourning: Chantal Akerman's 'La Captive' (2000)
We feel joy in the open sky, in the vast ocean. We sing the blues. Blue is a duplicitous colour. Likewise, Marcel Proust’s ‘Albertine’, who is the novelist’s most-noted character in his many-volumed À la recherche du temps perdu, is duplicitous, as duplicitous as the colour blue. In tome III, Albertine is La Prisonnière; in tome IV, she is Albertine disparue. As captive and fugitive, Albertine’s character, who speaks in half-truths, who loves men and women, who is ignorant and smart, who is beautiful and unattractive, who is lovable and unlovable is as duplicitous as memory itself.
Beautiful blue is everywhere in the two Albertine books of the Recherche. The colour unfolds and refolds, like Albertine herself, like her cherished, accordion-pleated ‘Fortuny gown in blue and gold …of a blue and virginal water’.
Chantal Akerman’s La Captive (2000) is a film comprised of rich azures, cobalts and ceruleans based on the bluest parts of Proust’s 4,300 page novel. Akerman’s film, like Proust’s Albertine, is swallowed in blue.
In Proust’s novel, Albertine dies in a horseback riding accident. In Akerman’s film, Ariane (who is the character based on Albertine) appears to have drowned. She cannot be found in the blue ocean.
Yet, Ariane has not vanished, for there was nothing there to lose. She was always already lost. Impossible to remember, yet impossible to forget: she is impossible to mourn. Ariane is even bluer than Albertine.
Beautiful blue is everywhere in the two Albertine books of the Recherche. The colour unfolds and refolds, like Albertine herself, like her cherished, accordion-pleated ‘Fortuny gown in blue and gold …of a blue and virginal water’.
Chantal Akerman’s La Captive (2000) is a film comprised of rich azures, cobalts and ceruleans based on the bluest parts of Proust’s 4,300 page novel. Akerman’s film, like Proust’s Albertine, is swallowed in blue.
In Proust’s novel, Albertine dies in a horseback riding accident. In Akerman’s film, Ariane (who is the character based on Albertine) appears to have drowned. She cannot be found in the blue ocean.
Yet, Ariane has not vanished, for there was nothing there to lose. She was always already lost. Impossible to remember, yet impossible to forget: she is impossible to mourn. Ariane is even bluer than Albertine.
