Film Review--Captives

Captives
directed by Angela Pope
written by Frank Deasy
starring Julia Ormond, Tim Roth, Colin Salmon, Mark Strong, Kenneth Cope, Bill Moody

Fresh off a bad marriage, a female dentist becomes sexually obsessed with a murderer and finds herself unable to extricate herself from the relationship.

Rachel Clifford (Ormond) gets hired on at a men’s low security correctional facility. One of her first patients is a man named Philip Chaney (Roth) and he immediately begins to seduce her by running his hand along the folds of her coat. She allows events to proceed to the point where the couple have sex in a bathroom stall at a restaurant. There is a tenderness between the two and it contrasts neatly in an overhead shot with the rather filthy environs they have chosen to consummate their love. From that point on Rachel is utterly enslaved by her carnal needs and her longing to be held again by someone who truly cares for her.

The story is incredibly simple. It deals almost entirely with Rachel’s eroding sense of Self. She gets herself involved in a world to which she is alien although the illicitness of her involvement with Philip pushes her forward to the point of no return. She could lose her job and he could lose his liberty but there is nothing that threatens them enough to force them to terminate their interaction.

The film is a decent investigation into the nature of obsession and how it can transform a person into someone they scarcely recognize. As Rachel crumbles her needs become more acute although she does have serious reservations after discovering that Philip broke his wife’s neck after determining she was having an affair. Rachel tries to rationalize this act but is wholly unable to convince her self that it might have been a legitimate reaction considering the circumstances.

A strange and fascinating aspect of this film is that the jail lets its prisoners out at a certain time every night and on weekends. This means that murderers and rapists are given the opportunity to go out and commit more heinous crimes before having to go back inside. I am not certain if this is actually how criminals are treated but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Still, it works for the film as it allows Philip and Rachel to expand their relationship and carry it forward in different locales.

Sexual urgency is palpable throughout this film. There is a genuine hunger throughout that each character fully embraces and acts on without hesitation. There is desperation, grief, the sudden shock of recognition in the flesh of another, the body reacting to sensations deprived for a certain length of time. Philip has apparently been sans female attention for a very long time so naturally he’s ready to explode the moment he first apprehends the pretty dentist. He reacts to her quite coolly, and casually explores her reactions to his overtures without giving too much away.

It is Rachel who allows the relationship to flourish because she has the opportunity early on to snuff it and chooses not to. She clearly longs to become involved with a greasy-haired con whose crimes early on she remains ignorant of. She knows she is playing with fire but refuses to give in to any doubt that might otherwise preclude her from acting on her instinct for sordid, messy sex in filthy locales with men who might have a fancy to choke the life out of her. One can’t help but feel a considerable amount of pity for this woman who seeks out her pleasure in such low places although this is tempered by the intensity of the bond that develops between these two. They truly do seem to be clutching each other as if their lives depended on it. Rachel even mentions that Philip reminds her of her father who used to hold her that way and whom she misses terribly.

The performances in this film are all quite natural and consistent for the material. Julia Ormond captures the essence of a woman who is spiraling out of control and knows of no method to stop it. Tim Roth is dynamic as a rather unsavory character who nevertheless possesses enough charisma to bed a woman whose emotions are easy to manipulate. Roth conveys both the sliminess of his character as well as his genuine desire to be loved. Mark Strong is frightening as a character who is ruthless and brutal when he needs to be.

Overall, this film is fundamentally an intriguing look into how raw, untrammeled passion can lead a person down a highly dangerous, sinister path. Rachel is a regular woman who allows herself to fall into a pattern where she is not in a position to protect herself. She loses her Self to her sexual needs and falls quickly into a realm of despair and desperation. Her plight is easily conceived as that of a woman who cannot distinguish between her anger over separating from her husband, and her desire to seek some sort of validation through her sexual encounters with Philip. She never seems to clearly demonstrate what she wants in this film. It is subsequently clear that she doesn’t know and moreover she doesn’t much care to know. Her body becomes the central focus of her endeavors and each moment spent with him takes her away from the pain she is otherwise experiencing in her life.