How can you dramatize real-life events you were a party to, but don’t fully understand yourself? In the case of Catherine Breillat, you do your very best to communicate the depth of your own lack of comprehension. Surely one of the least vain openly autobiographical films ever made, Abuse of Weakness is repetitive and infuriating – but deliberately so, and to its complement.
Cinema, like most arts, exists beyond time and space. They are a medium of transportation, and for most of us, our only opportunity to fulfil our deepest desires and confront our darkest fears. That’s why it seems unfair to look back on a year in film and focus only on new releases. Our year end obsession with …
Fat Girl Directed and Written by Catherine Breillat France, 2001 Ugliness and discord and disharmony go hand in hand with bad words and bad nature, while the opposite qualities are the sisters of good, virtuous characters, and resemble them. – Plato, Republic Sex may be the defining factor in Catherine Breillat’s career, but the descriptor …
While her best films may still be more unconventional in style, in recent years Catherine Breillat has made a successful turn toward films that could almost be called mainstream while keeping the focus firmly on gender. The sexuality, while present, is slightly toned down in its explicitness. The storytelling is a bit more clearly drawn. …
The twentieth year of Catherine Breillat’s directorial career marked a shift. While her thematic focus and bold vision remained true, her skills as a filmmaker and storyteller began showing strong signs of improvement beginning with 1996’s Perfect Love. It opens with a man explaining to the police how and why he killed his lover as …
Writing a series focused on the depiction of gender and sexuality in films, it would be a massive oversight not to talk about the work of French director Catherine Breillat. Few other directors have as consistently explored these topics as directly or as interestingly. The next few articles will explore Breillat’s 13 feature films in …
La Belle Endormie Directed by Catherine Breillat Written by Catherine Breillat France – 2010 Defying all expectations and conventions, Catherine Breillat creates a fairy tale that can only be attributed to her sensibilities with her newest film, La Belle Endormie. A loose adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, the film is about a young princess’ journey in …