When writing criticism feels like a waste of time

With Chantal Akerman film La Captive (2000), a loose adaptation of the fifth volume of Marcel Proust’s novel Looking for lost time In the book, published in 1923, a young man named Simon tries to psychologically trap his lover – without success. Constantly tracking her whereabouts cannot satisfy his insatiable and impossible desire to know her fully.

In her new, book-length essay on the film for which the film is named, Christine Smallwood also explores such a predatory obsession – not only for the controlling, voyeuristic character of Simon, but also for the critic herself. “Criticism, like dreams, contains , often an act of displacement in which the author transfers feelings from her own life onto the object or in which one object replaces another,” she writes in her introduction. Here Smallwood underscores the central theme of her book: the fact that we always relate our personal stories to an obsession or object of study, often turning our gaze inward to observe ourselves.

Part close-read, part portrait of Akerman, Proust, and himself, Smallwood’s compelling essay explores notions of time, transference, and imprisonment. It was written during the COVID-19 pandemic while caring for two young children. Smallwood bases her writing on her instinctive response to Akerman’s feeling that “duration itself can be art.” Akerman said of her films: “I want to make people feel the passage of time. That’s why I don’t take two hours out of their lives. You experience it.” But for the critic, especially one who locks small children at home, time is a scarce luxury. Experiencing two hours of film means missing two hours with a child, a partner or a parent. In one of several moments in which she pauses the text to comment on the writing process itself, Smallwood explains, “Writing this essay feels less like shaping time than pouring it down the sink.” As she writes, her baby grows up. Time passes, irrevocable and lost. It’s inevitable, then, that Smallwood’s experiences as a mother in the middle of the pandemic factor into her analysis of Akerman’s film.

Indeed, when Simon hobbles Ariane before instructing her to go back to sleep, Smallwood recognizes the pathology of this interaction while simultaneously re-projecting her own feelings onto an objectively disturbing scene of abuse. The sleepless critic, a prisoner in her own home, can’t help but read Simon’s controlling instructions as “a beautiful fantasy about true domestic harmony.” Sometimes we study a text so closely that we see beyond the violence right in front of us: Smallwood’s reading (or misreading) is deeply intertwined with a personal desire and need. There is no objective analysis.

Perhaps that’s why Smallwood is able to include her own life in the analysis La Captive is Akerman’s style and form. Famous for her frontal shots and long takes, Smallwood quotes Akerman as saying, “When you film head-on, you juxtapose two souls equally and create a real place for the viewer.” Akerman’s abundance of long-shots allows for a drift in which the viewer can fill moments with his own life and his inner thoughts. If in Akerman’s film, as she writes, “a lack of backup shots shifts the response to the audience,” Smallwood deftly translates this shifted response into her prose. The result is a compelling, close reading of what it means to be fascinated and captivated: by art, by time, by children, and by all the other everyday detritus that make up the life of a writer and mother.

La Captive (2024) by Christine Smallwood is published by Fireflies Press and is available online and through independent booksellers.