The “freely inspired” as a device. An interpretation of Akerman’s La Captive

Abstract

The article begins by tracing a hypothetical approach to the film La Captive (Akerman, 2000), a free interpretation of La Prisonnière from À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust, configuring a paratextual investigation. After a presentation of several synopsis of the film (and its Eco’s “Model Viewers”) which in most cases leave us to imagine a paradigmatic story of jealousy, the film analysis will reveal the actual content of the work and will try to demonstrate how the freely inspired, acting as a cultural device, aims to protect the reception of the text by constituting it as a point of access to the totality of Proust’s work.