“The Captive” offers the intriguing concept of “Don Quixote’s” author viewed through a lens more redolent of “Arabian Nights,” spinning tales to keep himself alive while a hostage of Moors in Algiers. But the known facts about this murky biographical chapter are vague, permitting writer-director Alejandro Amenabar much imaginative license, though he makes less of the storytelling-within-storytelling aspect than you initially expect. What emerges is a curious if entertaining bio-fiction with Miguel de Cervantes as protagonist in a convoluted costume intrigue, like a homoerotic spin on ye olde Western exoticizing of the Arab world– well-toned male bodies in the hammam substituting here for the traditional, scantily-clad Hollywood harem girls.
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