Catherine Breillat

Catherine Breillat

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36 Fillette Review


OK
36 Fillette (referring to a junior clothing size) feels like a first film, but Catherine Breillat had been toiling away for more than a decade before turning out this rough and often slipshod flick, an obvious precursor to her later works about young girls and the boundaries between sex and violence. Here, a blossoming Delphine Zentout teases man after man until finding one she's willing to bed, consequences be damned. Extremely gritty (both in tone and production values), it's not for everyone and comes across a little too unpolished, though supporters will argue this was on purpose.

A Real Young Girl Review


OK
Catherine Breillat didn't just start making shocking films. She's been churning them out for at least 30 years, and this film, widely banned for its hefty pornographic content, is one of her most notorious. The plot, as it is, involves a young girl (er, a real young girl) named Alice (Charlotte Alexandra), who's not just experiencing her sexual awakening in this summer of '63, but is also exploring all kinds of sensory disturbances. Case in point: Shortly after the film begins, Alice sticks a spoon in her vagina, then she vomits all over herself. Later scenes include playing with ear wax and, of course, a dalliance with an older man. Alexandra is often seen her in graphic shots (including one where she crawls around with feathers stuck in her posterior), so viewers should be warned, and while Breillat's low-budget work rates about a 3 out of 10 on the professionalism scale (the color timing is particularly awful), there's something oddly compelling and poetic about the movie. That said, it barely makes a lick of sense. Breillat's Fat Girl actually reminds me a lot of this movie, but done far better.

Continue reading: A Real Young Girl Review

Fat Girl Review


Bad
Fit for a ghoul's night out, Fat Girl stands cast iron firm with the simplistic, fatuous, built-in excuse that its woman director is baring the harsh sexual realities of adolescent girls. Being a boy, I might not understand female behavior and am unequipped to analyze this particular pseudo-feminist coming-of-age story. Fair enough. I'll pretend to ignore the mannered posturing and Health Class 101 "this is a no-no" dialogue when Older Teenage Boy coaxes Younger Teenage Girl to let him have anal sex with her, speaking variations on "It won't hurt!" for a scene that seems to last at least ten minutes. This is done almost entirely in an unbroken master shot that suggests unimaginative camerawork more than unblinking voyeurism. They dare you to look away, without possessing the courage of allowing the children to actually sound like children (they're mouthpieces for writer-director Catherine Breillat's one-note clinical politics).

Rather than show an even-handed evaluation of the rigors of hormonal change, Breillat (previously responsible for the unwatchable Romance) wants to indulge in her hour of hate. Life is pain, highness. Get used to it. She'd find keen bedfellows in Neil LaBute and Todd Solondz, other sultans of misanthropy who lack the balls to be earnest or honest. For children, dealing with trauma and pain is complicated. To bury that in sarcasm and academic theory feels cheap. These would-be auteurs (more like hauteurs) haven't earned the right to display suffering because they don't layer it in emotional truth (as Mike Leigh does throughout Naked and David Lynch in several key scenes of Blue Velvet). Of course, there I go again comparing her to all these (better) male directors. I don't care. Gender be damned, she's borderline inept.

Continue reading: Fat Girl Review

Anatomy Of Hell Review


Terrible
It's almost never fair to reduce a film, even a very bad film, to one single image or scene - out of context, almost anything can unfairly seem offensive, moronic, or just plain clueless. However, in the new Catherine Breillat provocation, Anatomy of Hell, you can fairly easily isolate one scene as being emblematic of the whole piece: The character known only as "the man" enters the room where he's been spending a whole lot of time staring at "the woman," takes a look at her naked body, slowly inserts the handle end of a hoe-like garden implement into her vagina and then walks off screen, leaving it there sticking out from her body. They both watch. In a better film, this could have been played as an act of extreme sexual obsession, the work of a near-psychopath, or just a bored boyfriend looking for new kink. In Breillat's clumsy hands, however, it just looks like desperation; having stuck her two nameless actors in a four-night-long battle between the sexes, Breillat seems at a loss for some other way to violate her actress. So, to the garden shed he goes.

Anatomy of Hell starts off just dandy in a gay nightclub where the techno is thudding as we see "the woman" (Amira Casar) watching her boyfriend make out with some guy. She goes to the bathroom and slits her wrists, only to have "the man" (porn star Rocco Siffredi) walk in on her. He hauls her off to the doctor to get stitched up, they have a nice, tense walk, and after going down on him, she says she'll pay him to come watch her: "Watch me where I'm unwatchable." It's all rather dark and disconnected, but there's an insistent, punishing quality to these early scenes that highlight writer/director Breillat's abilities as a filmmaker. She has a slithery way with the camera - especially in a scene shot from above where Casar sidles across the nightclub dancefloor, grabbing hands and shouldering past the dancing men with a liquid malevolence - which should have made this a more enthralling film. As it stands, though, Breillat lets her talents as a sensual visualist go to waste in the name of sheer agitprop of the dullest kind.

Continue reading: Anatomy Of Hell Review

Romance Review


Terrible
It's not every day that you can see a well known porn star acting in serious cinema. Of course, Romance is not really worthy of being called a serious film. While its theme of one woman's struggle to overcome sexual oppression is innovative, it lacks tact and fails miserably due to the crudity of its approach. I refuse to believe that this film is some sort of groundbreaking phenomenon that French audiences will appreciate because it's a brilliant "character study" -- and, as such, that American's will scoff at it. I saw the movie with two French grad students who both walked out of the film disappointed and visibly queasy.

Marie (Caroline Trousselard) is a depressed nymphomaniac school teacher stuck in a relationship in which she cannot arouse her lover. The whole story involves her searching throughout Paris for the fufillment that her asinine boyfriend denies her. She defiles her body in the process as she encounters different men who satisfy her deprived erotic needs. She is willing to take on everything and everybody: from a vile stranger on the her apartment stairway who prosteletyzes her for oral sex, to a dominating masochistic school principal, to porn star Rocco Siffredi (whose character admits he hasn't had sex in four months). Can you imagine what happens there?

Continue reading: Romance Review

Brief Crossing Review


Very Good
Director Catherine Breillat has made a few very interesting films simply by taking a damaged woman and a damaged man, squeezing them into a weird relationship, letting them indulge in some troubling sex, and then forcing them to talk about it. The best example is her notorious 1999 effort Romance, in which the woman talks to her boyfriend's naked crotch as often as she talks to his face, but equally interesting is Brief Crossing, a two-character tango that takes place during one night on an English Channel ferry.

French teenager Thomas (Gilles Guillain) boards the British-bound ferry, finds a place to drop his backpack, and then heads for the cafeteria. While sliding his tray down the line, he gallantly helps Alice (Sarah Pratt) with her dishes and silverware. They sit together in the crowded restaurant, and the dance begins.

Continue reading: Brief Crossing Review

Catherine Breillat

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Catherine Breillat Movies

Fat Girl Movie Review

Fat Girl Movie Review

Fit for a ghoul's night out, Fat Girl stands cast iron firm with the simplistic,...

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Anatomy Of Hell Movie Review

Anatomy Of Hell Movie Review

It's almost never fair to reduce a film, even a very bad film, to one...

Romance Movie Review

Romance Movie Review

It's not every day that you can see a well known porn star acting in...

Brief Crossing Movie Review

Brief Crossing Movie Review

Director Catherine Breillat has made a few very interesting films simply by taking a damaged...

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