Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002)

Grégoire Colin and Roxane Mesquida in Sex Is Comedy

Cast: Anne Parillaud, Grégoire Colin, Roxane Mesquida, Ashley Wanninger, Dominique Colladant, Bart Binnema. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Lauren Mahuel. Production design: Frédérique Belvaux. Film editing: Pascale Chavance. 

Sex scenes are so common in movies today that producers routinely hire "intimacy coordinators" to supervise them, mostly to avoid lawsuits and media controversies of the sort that have followed the release of films as various as Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), and Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013). There are no intimacy coordinators in Catherine Breillat's Sex Is Comedy. There's only the director, Jeanne (Anne Parillaud), who is trying to get the most out of the actors in the sex scene of the movie she's making. And this involves much pleading, coddling, coaching, and even bullying on Jeanne's part, especially since the actor played by Grégoire Colin and the actress played by Roxane Mesquida despise each other. Sex Is Comedy is based on Breillat's own experience filming a painful scene in a painful movie,  Fat Girl (2001). She is using this metafictional approach to examine several things, including the nature of acting, the role of the director, and the simulation of private intimacy as public performance. Despite its title, the movie provides very little comedy beyond some scenes involving the penile prosthetic the actor is forced to wear, and it ends in tears rather than laughter as Jeanne gets the performance she wants from the actress. Mostly, the value of Sex Is Comedy lies in the insights it provides into Breillat as the creator of films that push the boundaries of depicting sex on screen. 

Perfect Love (Catherine Breillat, 1996)

Francis Renaud and Isabelle Renauld in Perfect Love

Cast: Isabelle Renauld, Francis Renaud, Laura Saglio, Alain Soral, Michèle Rème, Alice Mitterand, Tom Rocheteau, Delphine De Malherbe, Marie Lebée. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Laurent Dailland. Production design: Françoise Dupertuis. Film editor: Agnès Guillemot. 

Catherine Breillat is a kind of anti-pornographer; her films are almost enough to turn one off from sex entirely. Or anyway, from any notion that sex is an expression of, as the title ironically suggests, Perfect Love. Breillat often seems to suggest that we are just animals trying to dress up our instincts with highfalutin labels. That occurred to me during the scene in which the naked Christophe (Francis Renaud) gets out of the bed he's sharing with Frédérique (Isabelle Renauld) and, for reasons known only to him, climbs the scaffolding outside her window. He looks like a particularly awkward monkey, and he inspires neither passion nor amusement in Frédérique, but rather deepens the contempt that's growing in her. The growth in their mutual alienation is the subject of the film, which begins in the aftermath of Christophe's unspeakable assault on and murder of Frédérique. The plot is simply a flashback that shows how their relationship developed and disintegrated so horribly. Of course, being French, they talk about it at length, narrating their own disaffection. I found it a curious misfire, a movie that's based in part on the disparity in their ages -- she is supposed to be a generation older, a twice-married woman with two children, including a daughter somewhat closer in age to Christophe than she is. Yet the actors cast as Christophe and Frédérique were born only a year apart; both were in their late 20s when the film was made, and they look it. I can respect Breillat's attempt at portraying the difficulties of a relationship and admire the commitment of her performers, but nothing in the characters seemed to justify the outcome. Nor can I deny the boredom that settled on me as the film proceeded. 

Nocturnal Uproar (Catherine Breillat, 1979)

Cast: Dominique Laffin, Bertrand Bonvoisin, Marie-Hélène Breillat, Joe Dallesandro, Daniel Langlet, Dominique Basquin, Gérard Lanvin, Hubert Drac, Bruno Devoldère, Maud Rayer. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Jacques Boumendil. Production design: Dominique Antony. Film editing: Annie Charrier. Music: Serge Gainsbourg. 

A Real Young Girl (Catherine Breilliat, 1976)

Charlotte Alexandra and Hiram Keller in A Real Young Girl

Cast: Charlotte Alexandra, Hiram Keller, Rita Maiden, Bruno Balp, Georges Guéret, Shirley Stoler. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, based on her novel. Cinematography: Pierre Fattori, Patrick Godaert. Production design: Catherine Breillat. Film editing: Annie Charier, Michele Queyroy. Music: Mort Shuman. 

Catherine Breillat's first feature, A Real Young Girl, was made in 1976 but not released until 2000. Like the rest of her oeuvre, it's about female sexuality, in this case the sometimes perverse desires and fantasies of a 14-year-old girl, Alice Bonnard, played by the 20-year-old Charlotte Alexandra. Alice is home from school at her parents' farm and sawmill in the French countryside, and she doesn't have much to do other than indulge those fantasies. Many of them center on a handsome young man known as Jim (Hiram Keller), who works for her father at the sawmill. She hates her icy mother (Rita Maiden) but is a little too playful for comfort (ours) with her father (Bruno Balp). Alice's fantasies spill over into reality as the film goes on, and sometimes it's hard to tell which is which. It's a raw and unsettling film, just painful and messy enough to pull it this side of pornographic, with some narrative clichés that Breillat would outgrow, like naming her heroine Alice and resorting to a Chekhov's gun for what passes as climax in the slender plot. But it's undeniably the work of a uniquely skilled filmmaker. 

Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat, 2004)

Amira Casar and Rocco Siffredi in Anatomy of Hell

Cast: Amira Casar, Rocco Siffredi, voice of Catherine Breillat. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, based on her novel. Cinematography: Giorgos Avanitis, Guillaume Schiffman. Production design: Jean-Marie Millon, Pedro Sá. Film editing: Pascale Chavance. 

I don't quite believe anyone who says they found Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell boring. There's certainly enough that's unforeseen in it to hold the attention of even the most jaded viewer. It may be that we expect better of Breillat, who has made her reputation on candid treatments of sex, especially female sexuality, so that the more novel transgressive elements of the film feel less like the work of a major director than of one who's out just to shock and/or disgust. And it may certainly be that the dialogue in the film feels like talk for talk's sake, a tiresome attempt to stimulate the mind as well as the body. The film also seems not to understand sexual pleasure and desire very well, especially where it comes to gay men. I'm not sure that it demonstrates homophobia on Breillat's part, as some have charged, so much as a wrong-headed feint at inclusivity. Still, so few films today give us much to talk about after viewing, so we ought to credit Breillat with an attempt at that at the very least. 

Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023)

Samuel Kircher and Léa Drucker in Last Summer

Cast: Léa Drucker, Samuel Kircher, Oliver Rabourdin, Clotilde Courau, Serena Hu, Angela Chen, Romain Maricau, Romane Violeau, Marie Lucas, Neilia Da Costa, Lila-Rose Gilberti, Jean-Christophe Pilloix. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, Pascal Bonitzer, based on a screenplay by Marie-Louis Käehne and May el-Toukhy. Cinematography: Jeanne Lapoirie. Production design: Sébastien Danos. Film editing: François Quiqueré. 

When we first meet Anne (Léa Drucker), she's using her considerable skills as a lawyer to help a young woman prosecute her rapist, and we learn that she has devoted much of her career to helping women in abusive situations. So why does Anne, all of a sudden, start having sex with her 17-year-old stepson (Samuel Kircher)? Catherine Breillat's Last Summer never quite comes to terms with Anne's hypocrisy, which is compounded by the lies she tells to her husband after his son tells him of the affair. Still, the film works, thanks to skillful performances by Drucker and Oliver Rabourdin as Anne's husband, Pierre, a rather dull businessman who doesn't have the emotional wherewithal to cope with the revelation. Breillat plays down the sensational aspects of the plot in various ways: in the sex scenes, the focus is on faces rather than bodies, and in the confrontation of husband and wife, the violence is emotional rather than physical. Even the revelation that Pierre has been told of the affair is postponed until he and Anne have had dinner with their two young adopted daughters and sent them to bed, although you can sense the tension building. Last Summer is a fine example of directorial restraint, up to the ending. The only question is whether restraint is appropriate to the subject matter.  

36 Fillette (Catherine Breillat, 1988)

Delphine Zentout in 36 Fillette

Cast: Delphine Zentout, Etienne Chicot, Olivier Parnière, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Berta Dominguez D., Jean-François Stévenin, Diane Bellego, Adrienne Bonnet. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, Roger Salloch, based on a novel by Breillat. Cinematography: Laurent Dailland. Production design: Olivier Paultre. Film editing: Yann Dedet. Music: Maxime Schmitt. 

Catherine Breillat's explorations of adolescent female sexuality continue in 36 Fillette. (The title refers to a French dress size in the "Junior" range.) The protagonist, Lili (Delphine Zentout), is 14 years old and precocious both mentally and physically, but perhaps not emotionally. She's visiting Biarritz with her mother (Adrienne Bonnet) and father (Jean-François Stévenin) and her 17-year-old brother, Bertrand, (Olivier Parnière). One evening, she wheedles her self-absorbed parents into letting her accompany her brother on a nighttime excursion into the clubs at Biarritz, and they hitch a ride with a 40-something businessman named Maurice (Etienne Chicot), who has a couple of Bertrand's acquaintances in his car. Eventually, Lili and Bertrand go their separate ways, and in the course of her explorations Lili encounters a local celebrity, Boris Golovine -- an extended cameo by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who got his start in movies playing a disaffected adolescent in The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959). They strike up a conversation which provides the bulk of exposition for Lili's character. Then she re-connects with Bertrand and Etienne, and goes off with the latter for an evening of sexual and emotional exploration in which it becomes apparent that Lili is in many ways the more mature person of the two -- though perhaps not enough to justify such an exploitative relationship. In the French manner, the film is too talkative to be shocking, but Breillat is really not out to shock audiences so much as make them question their own reactions to such a pairing. Zentout, who was 16 at the time, gives an astonishing performance, though I find myself queasy at the thought of so young an actress playing such a role.  

Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)

Anaïs Reboux and Roxane Mesquida in Fat Girl

Cast: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinée Khanjian, Romain Goupil, Laura Betti, Albert Goldberg. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Giorgos Arvanitis. Production design: François-Renaud Labarthe. Film editing: Pascale Chavance.

Human beings develop sexually, both in capability and desire, long before their societies typically allow them to demonstrate the capability and fulfill the desire. Which is the source of much comedy and much drama. As it happens, last night I watched a drama, Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl, and a comedy, the TV series Sex Education, both of which center on the conundrum of adolescent sexuality. I preferred the comedy, in large part because the series created by Laurie Nunn takes what seems to me a more balanced and humane and nuanced view of the subject than the film, which is so provocative and shocking that it verges on nihilism. It's about two sisters, Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) and Elena (Roxane Mesquida). Elena is 15 and beautiful; Anaïs is 12 and has a weight problem. But the two are close and spend a lot of their time together talking about sex until one day, while on a vacation with the family, Elena is seduced by Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), a law student. The sisters share a room, and on the first night that Fernando sneaks into the room, she lies in her bed pretending to be asleep while Fernando tries to persuade Elena into having sex with him and eventually penetrates her anally. Several nights later, he returns and consummates their relationship, while Anaïs, her back to the couple, silently weeps. When the girls' mother (Arsinée Khanjian) learns of the relationship of Fernando and Elena, she gathers them into the car and begins a harrowing freeway journey, dodging huge trucks, back to their home near Paris. Exhausted by driving, she pulls into a rest stop to sleep. Elena dozes off, too, but Anaïs stays awake until suddenly a man smashes the windshield and kills Elena and the mother. Anaïs flees into a nearby wooded area where the man rapes her. But when the police arrive at the scene, Anaïs claims that she wasn't raped and the film ends. Interpretations abound of this disturbing film, ranging from the extreme feminist view that all penetrative sex is rape to a more conventional view that it's our culture that views sex and violence as equivalents. But my own view is that Fat Girl (the original French title is À ma soeur! -- "for my sister") fails because the violent ending doesn't follow the first part of the film with any dramatic logic, but instead feels driven by a desire to provoke and shock. It' s an effective film in that regard, but one that shows its creator's hand more than it serves our understanding of the characters Breillat has so effectively created and developed.