In 1968 Henri-Georges Clouzot finished La Prisonnière, also released as Woman in Chains. It is the last feature of his career and the only colour feature he completed. It is a fetish-heavy psychological drama for adults who follow European art cinema next to SM, rather than a pure exploitation picture. A young woman, an avant-garde artist, and a voyeuristic gallery owner are pulled through bondage photography, jealousy, and erotic capture.
Stanislas is a wealthy unmarried Paris gallery owner who patrons Gilbert, a progressive artist. Gilbert shares a modest suburban flat with José, a television editor. On opening night Gilbert leaves with an influential young woman critic. José ends up in Stanislas’s luxurious apartment, where he shows her a photograph of a naked woman in bondage. The picture shocks her and she leaves, but the man and the image stay in her head. She later asks to watch a photo session. Erotic tension, and her attraction to the pretty model, overwhelm her. She flees again and angers Stanislas. They reconcile. José starts posing for him, and she wants more than the artificial studio arrangement.
While Gilbert is away on business in Germany, José and Stanislas spend a night at an inn in Brittany. Afterwards he panics, changes his mind, and leaves her there. Humiliated, she tells Gilbert everything when he returns. He drives to Stanislas’s flat meaning to kill him. The two men reach a tense reconciliation instead. José follows by car, runs a level crossing, and is hit by a train. She wakes from a coma in hospital and mistakes Gilbert, waiting at the bedside, for Stanislas come to take her back. After the physical disaster, the last hold on her is in her head.
The film sits with other 1960s work that tied erotic images to danger and desire: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966), Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), and Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967). Clouzot folds in pop and psychedelic visuals, including a dream sequence often set next to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and echoes of his aborted project L’Enfer. The bondage photography is not a how-to. The still works like a collar, the gallery like a hunting ground, and the model’s body is currency between the men and the woman who wants to enter the frame.
Laurent Terzieff plays Stanislas, the gallery owner and bondage photographer. Élisabeth Wiener plays José, Gilbert’s partner. Bernard Fresson plays Gilbert. Dany Carrel plays Maguy, Stanislas’s model. Claude Piéplu and Noëlle Adam play José’s father and mother. Darío Moreno plays Sala, the butler and driver. Gallery guests in cameo include Michel Piccoli, Charles Vanel, Joanna Shimkus, and Jackie Sardou. The characters are adults.
A mid-2010s sampling put the film at about 67% on SensCritique, about 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, and about 72% on AlloCiné. It remains a title for Clouzot completists and for readers of BDSM film history: a mainstream European director putting rope, cameras, and a woman’s desire into the plot without turning the picture into straight genre SM.
