The Captive (2025 film)

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 17 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.8/10.^[20]

Olivia Popp of Cineuropa observed that Amenábar "imbues the mythos with a sparkling shot of a gay enemies-to-maybe-lovers tale, complete with the production and costumed resplendence of a historical epic".^[21] Marta Medina of El Confidencial rated The Captive 2 out of 5 stars, lamenting the historical drama film to be a "wasted chance", as it tackles its central topic in a "prude and insignificant" fashion.^[22]

Historical depiction

Cervantes historian José Manuel Lucía Megías, author of 2025 nonfiction book Cervantes íntimo. Amor y sexo en los Siglos de Oro, acted as a historical consultant for the film. Contrary to the film's depiction, Lucía Megías considers the theory of a Cervantes engaging in homosexuality in Algiers a myth, originated in transgressive revisionism in the 1980s.^[23] The relationship between Cervantes and Hassan Pasha, two adult men of almost the same age, would have not been tolerated in the Islamic world at the time and place, where only relationships between an active older man and a passive young man were possible.^[23] The film also adapts the plot point that Cervantes was accused in his youth of engaging in homosexual acts with his mentor Juan López de Hoyos, which Lucía Megías described as a notion invented by modern writer Fernando Arrabal.^[23][24] In spite of this, Lucía Megías praised the film highly.^[23]