content warning: This article includes mild spoilers as well as descriptions of gendered violence.

Steve Buscemi: A question I get asked a lot is, when am I going to do a romantic lead?

Tim Roth: I’ve done it once.

Steve Buscemi:  Really?

Tim Roth: Actually, yeah. We don’t usually get offered them because of the way we look. I mean, we’re not Brad Pitt […] I did one in England, where I played opposite Julia Ormond. It would have to be in England, they cast people like us over there.

In Spring 1997, so presumably around the time I was born, Reservoir Dogs– Alumni Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth sat down for BOMB Magazine. Under the guise of conducting an interview, they caught up with each other and talked about thespian life, plain life, and projects past, present and future. It is a neat little time capsule of two greats at a very specific point in their careers, both more or less tied to Dogs-director Quentin Tarantino, discussing loads of performances seldom talked about today. The above excerpt, for instance, alludes to Angela Pope’s 1994 film Captives, in which Roth plays a con catapulted into a romance with Julia Ormond’s character, a dentist.

Now, judging by the letterboxd comment section (as you always should), the critical consensus is that Captives isn’t very good, but if you know why you’re watching the movie, you will have the time of your life. And the ‘why’ of Captives are two scenes: One in which Roth’s character cheekily bites into Ormond’s finger while grabbing her backside. In the other scene, he fucks her on the floor of a shoddy diner’s lady’s restroom. Romance!

When I was 15 or 16, I saw Captives for the first time in 10 parts on YouTube, quality 360p (as God intended).  Naturally, as I hadn’t had sex with anyone and wouldn’t for quite a few years, the plot didn’t leave a huge impression, but the tattoo on Roth’s upper arm and Ormond’s hastily opened blouse and stockings did. And that impression was still there, crystal-clear (well, 360p-clear) when I recently stumbled upon OneGate Media’s Blu-Ray release that we up here in Kartoffelland are being graced with. Who knows precisely why. But I was instantly hell-bent to take a nostalgia trip to Hot Trash Prison™ in full HD and reader – I have seen Captives numerous times during these last weeks because I am going thru it™ and am ready to report its crimes. And why I, like our protagonist Rachel, forgive them all in a heartbeat.

Under Arrest for Being Sexy (Allegedly)

So let me add to my sparse summary of Captives: In the Southgate area of London, dentist Rachel Clifford (Ormond) is in desperate need of a fresh start. We learn that she has recently separated from her adulterous husband (Peter Capaldi – what are you doing here? You were in Lair of the White Worm!) and has moved into a new flat. And there are other changes: Dr. Clifford has taken up a job treating inmates in a nearby prison twice a week. On her very first day, she meets the prisoner Philip Chaney. There is an immediate attraction, a few flying sparks while she identifies his temporomandibular joint dysfunction – how could there not be?

As fate would have it, Rachel runs into Philip soon after while grocery shopping. He quickly assures her that he’s “not done a runner”, but is instead attending college courses to finish up his IT degree. As they chat and she observes him gurgling down his first beer in eight years, you can practically see her swooning on the inside. And sure enough, the feeling is mutual: Philip slips a note into her lab coat during their next appointment. A heated, passionate affair in- and outside prison walls ensues, with the lovebirds naturally facing the threat of discovery, schemes from Philip’s psychotic fellow inmate Towler (Colin Salmon) and their own borderline toxic dynamic.

Now, before we dismantle said dynamic, let me sing the letterboxd-verified praises for the movie: While the premise sure sounds like a cheap made-for-tv-flick, its optics and direction are anything but. Don’t get me wrong, we won’t find any artistic camera experiments here, but Captives still carries a certain higher-quality-feel. Especially loveable is the use of its setting, which is so area-specific that it feels like home after the first hour. Writing in her Dead Sexy-review series for The Indiependent, film critic and Southgate native Steph Green reports:

“A suburban area in the London Borough of Enfield, watching Captives proved that many stalwarts of Southgate (including Southgate Kebab House, which has furnished me with many drunken lamb shish kebabs over the years) have been kicking for at least 14 years. Southgate Station, three stops from the end of the Piccadilly Line, is probably the only thing we have going for us – a Grade II* building designed in the Streamline Moderne-Art Deco style by Charles Holden in 1933. We’re most known for our high population of Greek Cypriots (raises hand sheepishly) and Amy Winehouse. Apparently, however, our uniquely UFO-esque station has been attractive to some filmmakers, namely one Angela Pope.”

And here we transition to our second high point: Captives is so clearly directed and conceived by a woman that it fills my wee heart with unrestrained joy. Philip Chaney alone is a walking female fantasy, not the kind of hunky mock-dangerous con who male directors think we might want, but a good-looking, if understandably dishevelled guy with an approachable sense of humor who immediately mugs off Rachel’s ex for cheating on her (“How could he be so bloody stupid?”) and “holds her like his life depends on it”. One review called him “wattpad-coded”, and if you don’t know what that means, congratulations, you and I do different things for pleasure. To speak in last summer’s internet terms, Philip would most certainly be called a ‘hot rodent boyfriend‘. Some things, like the appeal of his messily slicked back hair, prominent nose and slightly crooked teeth, are hard to put into regular phrases, I guess.

There is also a je-ne-sais-quoi about sex on film; The line between hot and cringe is paper thin. What makes a successful love scene is not set in stone, and to a degree, highly individual. I already mentioned the finger-biting and bathroom stall sex scene and their high audience approval. But you know what? The former doesn’t do it for me. At all. Not my thing, probably. But the scene immediately before the bathroom fuck, in which the pair sits in the diner’s booth, with Philip openly and unashamedly grabbing Rachel’s neck with one hand and her thigh with the other? It’s high school stuff, but still pretty hot (my excuse is that I didn’t date in high school and missed out on juvenile PDA. I went straight to the decorum of a queer woman in her early twenties trying to bed other women without seeming disrespectful).

What is always advantageous is chemistry between the players, of which there is plenty between Ormond and Roth. On paper, loads of Rachel’s lines would sound mind-meltingly silly, but Ormond pulls them off by sheer grace and a relatable giddiness about being seen, admired, desired. When she expresses traces of guilt because Philip seems so utterly desperate for and dependent on her, we don’t doubt her words one bit because Roth inhibits his rough appeal with as much ease as his desire for connection. It surely seems like a subversive dynamic, that. I feel like my philosophy degree has some things to say about love and power.

It’s All Fun and Games Until Some Bitch Has Read Critical Theory

It’s me, hi, I’m the bitch (it’s me).

You might have heard about one Simone de Beauvoir. An awfully good writer by her own admission and despite her denials an equally good philosopher, she wrote her seminal work The Second Sex between 1946 and 1949. It is a brief history of woman’s oppression as well as an existentialist examination of current affairs. The work is explicitly pro gay (de Beauvoir was pretty openly bisexual), pro choice and anti-traditional-family, so you can imagine that the Catholic church wasn’t happy.

And if you want to be equally unhappy, look no further than the second volume of The Second Sex, in which de Beauvoir outlines the depressing difference between men and women in matters of the heart. Because love, as de Beauvoir theorizes, is another element of woman’s subjugation, since society has made being loved and loving the focal point of womanhood. Accordingly, women spend their entire lives trying to please, appeal to and identify with men to fulfill their existence, to feel their purpose. To quote:

“But in the vast majority of cases, the woman only knows herself as other: her being-for-others is equal to her being. For her, love is not a mediator between herself and herself, because she cannot find herself in her subjective existence. She remains stuck in the lover that the man has not only revealed, but created. Her salvation depends on the despotic freedom that he has established and that can destroy her in a single moment. All her life she trembles before the one who, without really knowing it, without really wanting it, holds her fate in his hands.”

– Simonde de Beauvoir, Das andere Geschlecht. Rowohlt 2009, p. 830, translated into English by moi because I only had a German copy lying around.

Or, as my grandma likes to put it: “Love is a woman’s entire life, but for men, it’s a nice thing to have in the evening”. De Beauvoir, of course, made her point in the most frustrating way via her lifelong attachment and near feverish devotion to fellow existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, a man aesthetically and professionally describable as mid, and by regularly curating affairs with her obedient, teenaged female students. 

So what are woman’s options to become an autonomous, powerful being? And rest assured, we’d like some of that power. Power can be great. When we talk about it today, it is often in unfavorable contexts, when we try to explain the machinations of abuse on an individual or systemic level. Hell, now we’re talking about how we’re talking about power! And here looms another French philosopher, head famously egg-shaped, bespectacled and dressed in the finest turtleneck sweaters, whispering “Discourse!” in our ear. I am alluding, of course, to Michel Foucault, who liked to talk about power a lot, but in a pretty neutral fashion, as an all present, fluid entity that shapes our experiences and the structures we move in. You can find it everywhere: In the way you conduct your very own sexy time, in the way the government tries to police how you conduct your very own sexy time, in the way your dentist looks at you when you try to explain why you didn’t follow their recommendations (flossing is a propaganda tool of biopower!) and, of course, in prisons.

Ergo power = sometimes bad, sometimes good, mostly just a thing. A thing a gal might get pleasure from.

This is perhaps the one element about Captives (yes, we’re back) that you might call innovative: It’s an erotic thriller about a woman exploring the power she is wielding over a man. Sometimes. As mentioned above, Rachel is acutely aware that she is attracted to Philip because he needs her, because she is in control and because she has some of that sweet, sweet power now. We can imagine discovering her husband’s cheating has left her feeling pretty damn powerless. In the film’s opening scene, after all, she submerges herself in her bubble bath just to drown out a voice mail he left. Philip, during a heated argument at good old Southgate Station, accuses Rachel of only being interested “in a bit of rough”. Yet she scoffs when one of the prison wardens, seemingly eager to get into her good graces or panties, advises her: “Don’t worry, they call all the doctor’s vet”. “Yeah”, she coldly retorts, “And all the men animals.”. Angela Pope, rest easy with all that social critique, I was trying to watch this to switch off!

But switching off isn’t easy when the film just becomes so frustratingly boring. In a contemporary review for Variety, critic Derek Elley put it thus:

“Latter half of the pic, though OK, never quite fulfills the opening promise of an obsessive cross-tracks love story , and the thriller elements lack the sheer oomph needed to carry the viewer into different territory.”

Indeed, the places this story could go! Because of course, the ever-present question looming over our heads is what Philip is doing time for. In one scene, he listens to a (pretty embarassing) audio tape Rachel sent him and constantly replays a bit where she talks about a male co-worker. Will he turn out to be dangerous, after all? (no. no, he won’t). But what about all the ways they could be found out? Maybe the warden, who is given some antagonistic motivation? Maybe Peter Capaldi? (nope, these setups receive no pay-offs, either). Instead, the thriller-genre-duties ought to be fulfilled by Towler, who runs the inside of the prison through drugs, fear – and power.

That plot point is not only the least interesting option, it’s also pretty darn uncomfortable because Colin Salmon has to do his best ‘Scary Black Man’-schtick, which sticks out like a sore thumb because his character is the only character of colour with relevance to the story. That we see of, I should say, because Rachel refers to her ex-husband’s mistress as “that tart in a sari”. If that doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, might I recommend the post-colonial works of Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak or James Baldwin? Or you can just stay with Foucault, pick up The History of Sexuality and take a look at the scene in which Towler does a charged dance to a Reggae song in his undies, with some strong nip slips that reveal his piercings. He is only ever visited by his sinister subordinate on the outside (a young Mark Strong), so you can tick “villainous queer subtext” off your list of problematic items.

The Giant Elephant in the Prison Cell

There is a question Rachel starts asking early on, though sheepishly and mostly herself: What is Philip doing time for? The reveal occurs about midway through the film: He killed his wife after discovering she had an affair as well. Understandably, Rachel is shocked and taken aback, but eventually comes to the conclusion: “He must have really loved her to be angry enough to kill her.”

Quotes from French philosophers escape me here, but I think this is what the younglings have invented the term ‘delulu’ for.

I write this in a bit of yest, but obviously, if this were real life, Rachel wouldn’t end up in a once-in-a-lifetime romance, she’d be the slain subject of a true crime documentary on BBC4 highlighting the fact that this deadly outcome could’ve been seen from the mainland. In 1993, a year before Captives was released, the British Crime Survey reported that domestic violence made up 31 percent of all incidents of violence reported. In 2024, 30 years later, 2,307,000 people in England and Wales were estimated to have become victims of domestic violence during the year, almost 70% of whom were estimated to be women. Women’s Aid UK reports that domestic violence against women is often characterized by repeat offences, higher occurrences of severe violence and the male perpetrators using systemic sexism to their advantage when downplaying their often coercive and controlling behaviour. Behaviour like, you know, calling someone multiple times a day from prison because you had a fight, like Philip does. In reality, guys like him might be just as hot and witty and a great shag. But killing your spouse isn’t an oopsie, it’s not an indicator he just really, really cares a lot. It’s an indicator that that’s how he deals with rejection and it’s pretty likely he’ll do it again.

Now, I can hear you apathetically munching on some crisps, saying “Yeah, we all know that, shit’s awful, innit? But it’s just a movie!”. And I won’t counter that. If Captives would lean more into a social drama niche and market itself as a ‘movie with a message’, we’d be discussing the problematic message it sends. But really, Captives knows what it is, we know what it is – aside from some young, impressionable teenagers (and honestly, probably not even them), nobody would take the famed bathroom-stall-sex-movie as relationship advice. Isn’t it just a nice little fantasy, like those dollar store erotica novels about muscly barbarians and hot doctors?

What really fascinates me is why, of all movies, this one has become my comfort watch. Remember how I mentioned in the introduction that I was “going thru it™” at the moment? Let me elaborate:

Up to early summer this year, I was very active in a voluntary job. It took up about 80% of my free time, most of my friends were there and I loved the work. I was damn good at it, too. I was even voted one of the two co-leaders of the group.

Then, in May, a man from the group started harassing me out of nowhere. He kept messaging me after I plainly told him to stop. Eventually, he tried to dictate which of our meetings I could and couldn’t attend.

I started to notice that people would get this nervous and avoidant look when I tried to talk to them about the harassment. They would all tell me that what was happening was awful and wrong and that they’d support me, but whenever the perpetrator overstepped another boundary, no real action was taken. Increasingly, I was made to feel that I was the problem because I had spoken out and disturbed the peace, not the man who was bullying and threatening me. 

With every day, I was feeling more unsafe, started getting panic attacks in dark rooms and on public transport. I started looking over my shoulder more, checking for the perpetrator’s car before going to work and froze when I saw someone in the street who resembled him. Eventually, I had to leave the group. From what I can tell, the perpetrator has not faced any consequences for what he did, but I did lose most of my friends, my sense of safety and a huge chunk of my self worth.

Our Forbidden Love Affair With Escapism

I have multiple reasons for sharing this: One, it is pretty cathartic and maybe I’ll get a warm look of approval from my therapist. Two, I think it’s important to offer a first-hand account of violence that is on a pretty miniscule level. Not to me, of course, as you might guess, the impact of this is brutal. But when a woman talks about her experiences with gender-based violence, people don’t pay attention until it escalates up to a certain point, which is why bystanders and law enforcement often don’t act until it’s too late and, fatally, many victims don’t come forward in the ‘early stages’. The project UniSAFE acquired data from European universities and found out that even though 62% of all participants had experienced gender-based violence, only 13% went on to report it. The key reason: They weren’t sure the offense was serious enough. The most common form of violence? Psychological.

As for reason three: Why would I, with all this mess, still have Captives on repeat? Why would I want to escape to problematic fiction if I live in a reality burdened by this mess? That question kept bugging me. Was it the whole girl power-angle? Did I just enjoy vicariously reclaiming my power in the way Rachel reclaims hers? That argument falls kind of flat because Captives doesn’t investigate this subject too much. It’s not like Tim Roth gets pegged at some point, they still have good old missionary sex with him on top. The Night Porter, this ain’t. And let’s be real, once Philip gets released, with his IT degree, he’ll probably earn as much as girlfriend DMD. 

No, what makes Captives such a cozy escapist watch is that it has enough craziness to be worth remembering and revisiting, but it is not so dangerous to be revolting. In the end, unlike in real life, all the bad people get their comeuppance and we don’t have to worry too much because our protagonists aren’t the baddies. Everything that is complicated in real life is easy here. We can safely root for them and their silly little romance and put ourselves in Rachel’s or Philip’s place. We can fantasize about looking as chic as Ormond with her luscious long wavy hair and elegant black coat (#fallfit) and snogging with a guy who is animalistic on the toilet floor and romantic on the phone.

There is, of course, one final philosophical influence I can cite on this matter who perfectly captured the pleasure of liking the wrong thing:

“Mama I’m in love with a criminal

And this type of love isn’t rational, it’s physical

Mama please don’t cry, I will be alright

All reason aside I just can’t deny, I love the guy”

– Britney Spears, Criminal, 2011

Captives turns us on, and maybe it will put os on the edge a little, but we won’t be seriously hurt. That’s why it’s so captivating.