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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Almayer's Folly (2011)

Almayer's Folly (2011)
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Belgium
Runtime: 127 min

Chantal Akerman’s 2000 film The Captive was an ingenious reduction of the fifth volume of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Almayer’s Folly, her second foray into literary adaptation, transplants Joseph Conrad’s 1895 debut novel, which concerns a Dutch trader living in Malaysia, to the 1950s.  Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) came to Southeast Asia long ago to seek his fortune. He married the adopted Malay daughter of the wealthy Captain Lingard in the hopes of winning an inheritance, but Lingard’s fortune gradually dwindled after a series of ill-advised journeys in search of hidden treasure. Now Almayer is resigned to a meagre existence, running a trading post where no one trades. Nina (Aurora Marion), his half-Malay daughter, is his sole source of hope and comfort. But Dain, the young man Almayer had enlisted to help him find the lost treasure his father-in-law fruitlessly sought, has eyes for Nina, and threatens to steal her away from this steamy backwater forever.