Catherine Breillat

 Controversial French director of unusually explicit art-house explorations of female alienation, sexuality, and desire. She can be angry and cold without giving in to sentimentality, political posturing or self-pity. I'm not sure if this is valid but Breillat and Camile Paglia are inextricably linked in my mind.

Listed Chronologically

Romance (Unrated) (DVD)    1999
Vidmark/Trimark DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 $15.89 Add to Cart
Directed by Catherine Breillat. There have been many French and Italian art films with explicit sex the last few years, and this is the most acclaimed of the bunch.

Caroline Ducey plays a sad wisp of a woman trapped in a loveless relationship with a man whose coldness to her is unbearably cruel to watch. She seeks out increasingly daring and perverse sexual outlets and ruminates on her nature, voicing many sincere female views about sex and self image that are common, but seldom spoken. Some are profound and sympathetic, while others are self-serving or pathological, but all have verisimilitude. (If I do nothing else on this site, I want to argue forcefully that art is what remains when propaganda is stripped away. Breillat's greatest asset is her lack of a soapbox, and one shouldn't assume that Ducey is to be viewed as wise or good simply because she's the female protagonist in a film made by a woman.)

The cast and crew on this picture were real snobs - they were incensed when Breillat brought in porn actor Sifferedi, and made his part of the shoot a living hell. Ducey finally snapped and refused to keep having sex with him, and is bitter about the film. I would prefer he wasn't in it, but only because he is so recognizable. Aside from that he is perfectly adequate in his minor role as a one-dimensionally virile man.

Best to watch this in French with English subtitles, because the English dubbed dialogue is inferior.

Starring Caroline Ducey, Sagamore Stévenin, François Berléand and prolific XXX actor Rocco Siffredi. Run Time: 98 minutes. Region 1 encoding

 

Perfect Love (Parfait Amour!) (DVD)    1999
Fox Lorber DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 $14.89 Add to Cart
Catherine Breillat is starting to remind me of Zulawski or Cronenberg in the way her movies are all of a piece stylistically and thematically. A Breillat film has a female protagonist who is dissatisfied with her sex life, and who is an introspective and tormented soul. All of Breillat's films have lots of sex scenes, and tend to contain at least one scene that is "explicit."

In Parfait Amour! Isabelle Renauld stars as a successful woman in her early 30s who falls in love with an unlikable younger man (Francis Renaud) who in some ways would be a better match for Renauld's teenage daughter Emmanuelle. The young man expects to be free to hang out in bars with his best friend and chase women.

Renauld thinks that her boyfriend and his pal have a homosexual bond far stronger then her relationship. Their tormented love goes through many bitter stages, and decays into pathology, and violence. Intelligent sick love story with loads of trademark Breillat sex, including some brief unsimulated activity.

 

Fat Girl - Criterion Collection (DVD)    2001
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 $24.89 Add to Cart
Stark intriguing experience from French chronicler of young female angst and erotic turmoil, Catherine Breillat (Romance, A Real Young Girl). An ungainly and somewhat disturbed girl on holiday with her attractive older sister and indifferent parents is subjected to emotional torments aplenty. The older sister begins experimental trysts with men which often involve sneaking her lovers into their shared bedroom and having sex while poor younger sister lies confused in the dark. Disturbing violence, emotional and otherwise. Breillat has a penchant for including one shot or scene in each film that will be cut somewhere . in this instance, a young man putting on a condom.

"Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, Elena, is a teenage beauty. While on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along with Elena as she explores the dreary seaside town. Elena meets Fernando, an Italian law student, who seduces her with promises of love, and the ever-watchful Anaïs bears witness to the corruption of her sister's innocence. Precise and uncompromising, Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl is a bold dissection of sibling rivalry and female adolescent sexuality from one of contemporary cinema's most controversial directors."

DVD FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer with Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 soundtracks . Behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Fat Girl . Two interviews with the director, including a look at the film's alternate ending . French and U.S. theatrical trailers . New and improved English subtitle translation . Plus: an essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and an interview with Catherine Breillat from the French film magazine Positif

 
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