Akerman, Chantal

A Couch in New York

When Dr. Henry Harriston (William Hurt) makes the uncharacteristically spontaneous decision to swap apartments with someone in Paris, he opens his life up to the possibility of new things. The woman who answers his ad is Beatrice Saulnier (Juliette Binoche), a dancer looking for respite from an onslaught of lovesick admirers. In New York, Beatrice inadvertently finds herself analyzing Henry's patients through a series of misunderstandings on their part that she is his replacement during his vacation. With help from her friend-secretary Anne (Stephanie Buttle), she continues Henry's practice and brings light and happiness to his patients, until Henry himself--who has returned early to New York--shows up and, his curiosity piqued by what seems to be going on, gains access to Beatrice as John Wire, a supposed patient of himself. What follows, and how it ends, makes for perhaps the most charming romantic comedy to come along in ages, and rivals the great Shop Around the Corner, Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 film. Binoche is impossibly charming, Hurt creates a wondrously believable suppressed psychoanalyst reborn through love, and Chantal Akerman as director pulls it all together with deft skill. --James McGrath

A successful New York psychoanalyst nearing a nervous breakdown and his French neighbor make an overnight decision to swap apartments. Neither one knows the other but find themselves deeply involved in their counterpart's social settings, and the people in their lives are caught in an amusing state of mistaken identity and confusion by the sudden change of enviroments.

The Captive/La Captive

Handsome and hopelessly neurotic Simon (Stanislas Merhar) lives in a labyrinthine Parisian apartment with his ailing grandmother (Last Year at Marienbad"s Francoise Bertin) and Ariane (Sylvie Testud), the object of his unquenchable desire. Obsessed, Simon keeps Ariane as his willing captive; she tolerates his endless interrogations and surveillance but is able to maintain her own reserve of privacy and freedom. However, she leads a passionate double life with other women that magnifies Simon"s pain and culminates in a devastating finale. Directed by international film sensation Chantal Akerman (A Couch in New York, Night and Day), inspired by Marcel Proust"s La Prisonniere.

Kimstim Collection: La Captive

Tomorrow We Move

Un divan à New York [Region 2]

When Dr. Henry Harriston (William Hurt) makes the uncharacteristically spontaneous decision to swap apartments with someone in Paris, he opens his life up to the possibility of new things. The woman who answers his ad is Beatrice Saulnier (Juliette Binoche), a dancer looking for respite from an onslaught of lovesick admirers. In New York, Beatrice inadvertently finds herself analyzing Henry's patients through a series of misunderstandings on their part that she is his replacement during his vacation. With help from her friend-secretary Anne (Stephanie Buttle), she continues Henry's practice and brings light and happiness to his patients, until Henry himself--who has returned early to New York--shows up and, his curiosity piqued by what seems to be going on, gains access to Beatrice as John Wire, a supposed patient of himself. What follows, and how it ends, makes for perhaps the most charming romantic comedy to come along in ages, and rivals the great Shop Around the Corner, Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 film. Binoche is impossibly charming, Hurt creates a wondrously believable suppressed psychoanalyst reborn through love, and Chantal Akerman as director pulls it all together with deft skill. --James McGrath

La Captive [Region 2]