Catherine Breillat
b. July 13, 1948, Bressuire, France
by Brian Price.
The central preoccupation of Catherine Breillat's work is the sexuality of women. That is, in and of itself, no major accomplishment. How many male directors, by contrast, are not in some way preoccupied with women? Of course, the preoccupation with female sexuality in most forms of cinematic production is marked by exhibitionism rather than introspection; it reassures where it could tear apart. Even in a film like Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale (2002), any effort to revise the image of the figure of the femme fatale along feminist lines is undercut by extensive displays of the female body. In this case, the femme fatale may no longer be the cause of the noir hero's downfall, but she is still the source of visual pleasure. Although, Breillat's films also tread a very fine line between exhibitionism and introspection —she admits that they are, after all, always about sex— they do so under the guidance of a fundamental difference in conception. In Breillat's own words: “I take sexuality as a subject, not as an object.”
But, of course, this formulation is only half right. Her films are, as I have said, uniquely concerned with a woman's understanding of her own sexuality.
Brève traversée.The representation of this sexual reckoning encompasses a wide range of issues including the adolescent obsession with the loss of virginity, in films like Une vraie jeune fille (1975) and 36 Fillette (1988); a woman's (possibly) masochistic relation to sex in Romance (1999); and the seemingly unbridgeable sexual and emotional gulf between an older woman and a younger man, in Parfait amour! (1996) and Brève traversée (2001). However, the films are also sexually explicit; contrary to Breillat's assertion, sex is an object as well as a subject in her films. Moreover, the sexual acts on display in Breillat's films are not only explicit, they are often unsimulated, a characteristic of her films that has contributed to her unflattering (in my view) international reputation as the auteur of porn. For Breillat, the visual display of sex is inseparable from the representation of the consciousness of her female characters. The representation of sex is also central to the development of her visual style —a level of innovation that has been grossly overlooked in contemporary film culture. And herein lies both the challenge and the controversy of her work.
Catherine Breillat's preoccupation with the representation of female sexuality began very early in her artistic career. Breillat began as a writer, publishing her first novel, L'homme facile, when she was just 17. Ironically, the book was banned for readers under the age of 18 in France for its explicit and transgressive sexual content, thus initiating Breillat into a lifetime of controversy. Breillat would quickly gain a reputation as the female De Sade, the new Bataille —a purveyor of transgressive sexuality. Breillat went on to publish seven novels and one play, many of which she would herself adapt to the screen.
Breillat transitioned to filmmaking in 1975 with an adaptation of her fourth novel, Le Soupirail, retitled Une vraie jeune fille. Standing in between this transition from novelist to director was a brief, but no doubt highly influential, acting stint. In 1972, Breillat appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, playing a character named Mouchette.
Charlotte Alexandra en Une vraie jeune fille.Bertolucci could not have chosen this name more wisely, drawn, as it is, from the eponymous protagonist of Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1966). Bresson's Mouchette, a very young, utterly disenfranchised girl who is both sexually precocious, sexually abused, and suicidal, was likely a template for many of Breillat's own tortured adolescents. But Bertolucci's film, which centers on the emotional anguish of an American man in Paris who begins an anonymous and transgressive affair in a empty, dilapidated Paris flat, was no doubt a major influence on Breillat's representation of sexuality. Indeed, in 36 Fillette, Breillat cast Jean-Pierre Léaud, who also had a brief role in Last Tango in Paris. And, of course, the censorship problems that Bertolucci faced with Last Tango in Paris, for its representation of sodomy, amongst other things, were ones with which Breillat would become increasingly familiar.
Breillat's first film did not see the light of day until twenty-five years later, when it was released in France in 2000. Une vraie jeune fille was shelved by its backers for, once again, its transgressive look at the sexual awakening of an adolescent girl. And it is not so hard to see why. Une vraie jeune fille is an awkward film. It represents Breillat at her most Bataillesque, freely mingling abstract images of female genitalia, mud, and rodents into this otherwise realist account of a young girl's sexual awakening. In her summary of Susan Sontag's defense of a literary strain of pornography, Linda Williams offers what stands as an apt description of Breillat's approach in Une vraie jeune fille, where an “elitist, avant-garde, intellectual, and philosophical pornography of imagination [is pitted against] the mundane, crass materialism of a dominant mass culture.” There is no way, in other words, to integrate this film into a commodity driven system of distribution. It does not offer visual pleasure, at least not one that comes without intellectual engagement, and, more importantly, rigorous self-examination—hence Breillat's assertion that sex is the subject, not the object, of her work.
The difficulty of Breillat's work—that is, her steadfast refusal to make conventionally erotic images, or films, for that matter, which don't deal with sex at all—has lead to a myriad of censorship problems. Her second film, Tapage Nocturne(1979), which also details the sexual longing of a young woman, and was adapted from her novel of the same name, also met with censorship. Although the film was released, access to it was forbidden
Cartel de Romance
to anyone under 18. But it was with the release of Romance in 1999 that Breillat would face censorship internationally, when the film was either banned altogether in some countries, or given an X rating. It was a situation Breillat spoke out about when she declared that, “censorship was a male preoccupation, and that the X certificate was linked to the X chromosome.” Breillat's statement was echoed in the French poster for the film, which features a naked woman with her hand between her legs. A large red X is printed across the image, thus revealing the source of the trouble: a woman in touch with her own sense of sexual pleasure.
Romance, and the world-wide discourse about pornography that erupted in the wake of its release, best typifies the challenge and the interest of her work. Romance is about a woman, Marie, whose boyfriend refuses to have sex with her. Her frustration leads her to a series of affairs in an effort to not only find pleasure, but seemingly to arrive at some better understanding of her own desire. The film is sexually explicit, and features, as do many of Breillat's films, acts of unsimulated sex, hence the many accusations leveled against Breillat that she is a pornographer. Indeed, Breillat willfully courted such accusations by casting Rocco Siffredi, a famous Italian porn star, as one of Marie's lovers. Moreover, Marie's sexual encounters are marked by a sense of sadomasochism. Indeed, after having her baby she winds up with a man who is also the principal of the school where she teaches, having blown up her apartment and her boyfriend (who is also, presumably, the father of her child) on the way to the hospital.
Romance was banned in Australia upon its release in January 2000. In his review of the Office of Film and Literature's (OFLC) report on the film, Adrian Martin describes the reason for the ban. And in so doing, Martin arrives at precisely the thing that makes Breillat's films so difficult, and so interesting. Martin surveys the censors' objection to the scene where Marie is solicited by a man in the hallway of her building. In this scene, a man offers Marie twenty-dollars to perform cunnilingus on her, to which she assents without saying a word. Of course, more occurs, as Marie is turned over (or turns over) as her perpetrator then enters her from behind. As he continues, Marie seems to sob, and when he leaves, she shouts that she is not ashamed. Martin notes that in describing the scene, the writer of the OFLC report says that “he orders Marie to turn over,” and that she tries to “scuffle away.” Martin replies, “…I did not see Marie try to 'scuffle away' during the scene, or be forced to turn over.” Martin's point is that this writer's language reveals his own moral response to an image, as opposed to what is actually present in the image: “One of the most interesting things about Romance is the way in which it inscribes in its own material ambiguous designation of obscenity.” In other words, neither Breillat nor Caroline Ducey (Marie) give us any concrete signs of her own response to what is happening. We cannot walk away confident of Marie's outrage, only our own, at best. Indeed, the whole scene begins with a voice-over where Marie proclaims that it is, in fact, her fantasy to be taken this way. Yet, the act itself is inscribed into the realist space of the plot, thus blurring the line between fantasy and reality that is signaled by Marie's voice-over.
As such, when we watch this act on screen, and many others like it, we are left only with what we think of what we see. Moreover, we project our own values back on to the screen, as Martin further notes when he cites a review of the film that describes the scene between Marie and Rocco Siffredi as a “humiliating affair.” Of course, there is, to my eyes, no signs of humiliation in that scene. If anything, it is a frank and very physical depiction of a sexual encounter. Siffredi asks Marie if he can have anal sex with her, an act that stands as the possible source of said humiliation. However, this possibility is complicated by the fact that she very calmly consents, on the condition that he first continue to make love to her. Moreover, the scene begins with Marie telling Siffredi, while holding a soiled condom, how men like to keep things hidden —how easily they are disgusted. The only sign of shame in the sequence comes when she admits to Siffredi, in the middle of sex, that she only sleeps with men that she doesn't like. If there is shame here, it is the viewer's.
And that's just the point. Breillat exposes us to sexual encounters, often very volatile ones, but does not tell us what to think about them. She does not, I believe, judge her characters, or their desires. But that does not mean, however, that Breillat's images and characters are necessarily removed from moral consideration. Rather, the opacity of
Roxane Mesquida y Anaïs Reboux en À ma soeur!
her characters, the material designations of obscenity, to borrow Martin's phrase, only make the films more meaningful. [ATENCIÓN: a continuación se revela información que quizá no quiera conocer el futuro espectador de À ma soeur!. Si es así, sugiero que se retome la lectura a partir del siguiente párrafo.] For example, in À ma soeur! (2001), Breillat tells the story of the rivalry and sexual awakening of two teenage sisters. One sister, Elena, is fifteen, thin and attractive; the younger sister, Anaïs, is twelve, overweight, and subject to Elena's hostility. À ma soeur! ends with a scene in which Elena, Anaïs, and their mother are driving on the highway. Out of nowhere a man jumps through the windshield, killing both Elena and her mother. It is a brutal and surprising conclusion to a film that has otherwise moved along very slowly, in a pace closer to De Sica's Umberto D than the horror genre that it ends up resembling. After murdering Elena and her mother, the killer takes Anaïs into the woods and rapes her. The scene is horrifying, and is made more so (for this viewer at least) by the apparent lack of signs of resistance or even possibly distress on the part of Anaïs. Breillat and her brilliant young performer, Anaïs Reboux, resist the signs of terror that typically accompany such scenes. As Anaïs is escorted out of the woods by the police, we hear them say that Anaïs claims that no rape took place. And it is important, I believe, that we do not hear Anaïs say this. For one, by refusing coded signs of distress, Breillat, it seems to me at least, asks us to try to see this rape from Anaïs' perspective. That is, Anaïs does not want to view it as rape, but as a sexual experience, especially as her age, body, and attractive older sister have previously stood in the way of her sexual desires. But this is not to excuse the rape. At all. Rather, by courting ambiguity, Breillat presents us with a complicated, if very controversial, portrait of the psychology of a young girl. We can judge this scene any way that we choose. We will likely be outraged and saddened. We can even condemn Breillat as the creator; however, our condemnation would, I believe, miss the point. For there is no question that what we see is rape; the question is why would this young girl want to see it otherwise. And our answer to that will not be found in easy, moralizing statements.
This resistance to simple, and therefore limiting, character comprehension, is the key to Breillat's films, all of which stands as efforts to represent the consciousness of her female characters in extremely complex terms. She does not afford us the easy access to the mind of women that one finds in mainstream film where a woman's consciousness is always externalized. Breillat is very clear about this, as she has said:
There is no masculine psychology in my cinema. There is only the resentments and desires of women. A man should not attempt to recognize himself in my male characters. On the other hand, he can find [in the films] a better understanding of women. And knowledge of the other is the highest goal.
Therein lies one of the chief virtues of Breillat's work, and the very trait that makes it just as important for men as it is for women. In refusing to represent male psychology in any significant way, Breillat not only refuses to reinforce conventional patterns of identification, but asks that men learn something about women; or at the very least, the male spectator is refused easy signs of character psychology. However, Breillat's innovations are by no means limited to questions of identification and character psychology —though these questions do stand at the center.
One of the unfortunate consequences of Breillat's reputation as the auteur of porn is that it has obscured the much more interesting fact of her engagement with the history of modernist filmmaking. Breillat is a central figure in European film culture. In addition to her stint in the Bertolucci film, Breillat has written screenplays for directors such as Maurice Pialat (Police, 1985), Federico Fellini (And the Ship Sails On, 1983), Liliana Cavani (The Skin, 1981) and many others. Likewise, her own films have shown an interest in the expansion of genre, a major characteristic of European modernist filmmaking, as in her renovation of the policier in Sale comme un ange (1991). Moreover, Breillat is vocal about the filmmakers who have shaped her conception of cinema, consistently praising the work of figures such as Warhol, Pasolini, Oshima, Dreyer, and Bresson —all of whom can be felt in Breillat's films in very interesting ways.
Perhaps the largest influence on Breillat's work is to be found in Italian neorealism, or at least in the idea of neorealism. Breillat's films often move quite slowly. She prefers long takes with few camera set-ups. She is very interested in documenting the quotidian, more fond of watching a young girl walking down the street than she is in setting that same character before an easily resolved conflict in an effort to keep the narrative moving. In this sense, Breillat gets much closer to Zavattini's famous idea about neorealism and what it would replace:
…the most important innovation, of what is called neorealism, it seems to me, is to have realized that the necessity of the 'story' was only an unconscious way of disguising human defeat, and that the kind of imagination it involved was simply a technique of superimposing dead formulas over living social facts.
In the case of Breillat, this realist tendency is always put in the service of living social facts. Indeed, the sexuality on display in her films is well described by the idea of “living social facts.” For example, in À ma soeur!, there is a scene where Elena invites her newly acquired Italian boyfriend to sneak into her bedroom at night. Elena, of course, shares this room with Anaïs. The scene involves Fernando begging and often coercing Elena to sleep with him. And their sexual foreplay is performed, most awkwardly, in front of Anaïs, who only pretends to be sleeping. The scene lasts well over ten minutes and is filmed largely in medium shots done in long takes. Moreover, this scene of sexual initiation is, of course, a major interest of contemporary Hollywood film (think American Pie [Weitz & Weitz, 1999]). However, the sexual exchange documented here is slow, clumsy, and very confused. Gone is the mainstream film's attempt to represent sex, even teenage sex, as something unnaturally fluid, graceful, or amusing. Breillat replaces that conception of sex with a very realist representation of an unknowing, confused adolescent sexual experience. Zavattini's 'dead formula' is absent. As such, Breillat manages a level of realism largely absent from actual neorealist film.
Breillat's films are also characterized by a high degree of reflexivity, thus further signaling her indebtedness to European modernism. This reflexive tendency of her work often confronts the realist dimension of her filmmaking in interesting ways. [SPOILER] For example, Parfait amour! begins with documentary-like footage featuring the male protagonist of the film, who will ultimately kill his older girlfriend, re-enacting his
Etienne Chicot y Delphine Zentout en 36 fillette
crime for the police. The film then proceeds to tell the story of that relationship in a realist fashion. Likewise, when the murderer appears at the end of À ma soeur!, the neorealist-like treatment is run off-course by the intrusion of the actions and ethos of the horror film, in which teen sex is always met with murder.[FIN DEL SPOILER] And in her most recent film, Sex is Comedy (2002), Breillat offers up a reflexive meditation on the making of pornography. Breillat's reflexivity can be very frustrating. I prefer, for example, 36 Fillette, where the reflexivity is largely absent, and we are treated, without interruption, to an important story about a young girl's attempt to come to terms with her own sexuality. Indeed, the film, as someone like Zavattini would have hoped, makes important connections between class consciousness and sexuality while never leaving behind the substance of the world where these concerns are in fact lived out. However, Breillat's tendency to disrupt her own realist narratives is, I would argue, part of a larger concern to analyze not only the conventions of filmmaking that she is interested in negating, but also the ones that she is employing. In other words, she distrusts realism as a strategy even though it is her preferred mode of representation.
Along the same lines, Breillat is also one of the most important colorists working in film today. That is, she often uses color not only naturalistically, but as an important form of signification. For example, in 36 Fillette, the young girl finally agrees to go to the hotel room of her older, rich male suitor. This character, of course, bears a striking resemblance to Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. What takes place in this hotel room, however, is a reversal of that sexual anguish. Instead of watching a man tortured by what he takes to be his own perversity, we witness in Breillat's film a long scene of a young girl trying to figure out —and often changing her mind about— what she wants from this man. Breillat uses color marvelously here. The hotel sits on a beach front. Breillat films the room with blue light and a tannish, orange décor. These are, of course, the colors of the beach: the outside world of the beach itself —blue water, tan sand— is replicated on the inside. And thus a level of tension and analysis is added to the image, as we are reminded that this potential coupling, and deflowering, is taking place in the context of a summer vacation. Whimsy and high seriousness are inextricably linked; sex once again is treated as a subject even while it remains an object. And in coloring this scene so markedly, Breillat can make further reference to Last Tango in Paris, which is famous for cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's use of color, a scheme he borrowed from the paintings of Francis Bacon.
Breillat's work is obviously the product of a major auteur. Her dismissal as the auteur of porn, then, speaks volumes. For one, it excludes her from the accolades with which her male counterparts have long been lavished, and to whom she bears a resemblance. But also, to deny the importance of Breillat's work, to relegate her to a realm outside of art, would be to demand that art merely confirm our ways of thinking instead of challenging them. And this is, I would imagine, what Breillat had in mind when she told an interviewer, “I don't really think about my audience very much.” The point, in other words, is not to satisfy expectations, but to confound them. And thus new ideas, new ways of seeing, can emerge.
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© Brian Price, November 2002 [Brian Price recently completed a PhD in cinema studies at New York University, where he currently teaches courses on film and writing. He is also Assistant Editor of Framework.]
Fuente: sensesofcinema.com (léase el artículo allí para disponer de las referencias bibliográficas).
It is not so much her subject matter that makes novelist/actressturned-director/screenwriter Catherine Breillat so provocative and controversial. Rather, it is the manner in which she depicts that subject matter, the choices she makes as a filmmaker as she portrays her characters and their sexual longings. None of the liaisons in Breillat's films are "traditional," because of the age differences between the characters or their stations in life. Their unions are injurious and obsessive, with Breillat not holding back in any way as she explores the manner in which duplicity, contrition, and rejection kindle sexual yearning. Her primary focus most often is on her female characters and their carnal appetites. In this regard, Breillat has spent her directorial career re-making the same film (albeit with heroines ranging in age from adolescence through early middle-age).
With boring regularity, Hollywood has churned out films focusing on teen-agers and their rampaging hormones. Yet Breillat's 36 fillette is a different, and decidedly more adult, take on this theme. Breillat tells the story of Lili, a restless, alienated fourteen-year-old who attracts the attention of several men—and, in particular, a middle-aged playboy—while on vacation with her family. As the story unfolds, the question arises: Will she or won't she lose her virginity?
What sets 36 fillette apart from other teen coming-of-age films is the way in which Breillat presents her lead character. Lili's sexual curiosity does not lead her to boys her own age; instead, she is involved with males who might be her father. The focus of the story is on her, and not her potential sexual partners; she is depicted as being just as much of a sexual predator as any male. Despite her age and lack of sexual experience, Lili is no tentative, blushing innocent. Neither is she a sexual victim. She is instead an indecisive young woman whose fully developed body mirrors her craving for sexual initiation. As Breillat explores the social and sexual realities of the character, the men with whom she deals serve as mere props; they exist solely as a means for Lili to explore the power of her emerging sexuality. And the sexuality Breillat portrays is explicit; her character's tender age is no excuse for the filmmaker to cut away from actress Delphine Zentout's voluptuous body during the film's sex scenes. 36 fillette—and, for that matter, all of Breillat's films—may not be in the same artistic league as the all-time-best cinematic chronicles of sexuality and desire, adolescent or otherwise. What sets them apart are the choices the filmmaker makes for her lead characters, and the candid manner in which she portrays their sexuality.
Breillat began her career as a novelist, and was a published author while still in her teens; because of its salty language, her first book, L'Homme facile, was the subject of controversy in her native France. She started out in cinema as an actress—fittingly, she had a role in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris—and then co-scripted such inconsequential sexploitation films as Michel Boisrond's Catherine et Cie and David Hamilton's Bilitis. Despite its trite handing, Catherine etCie does offer up a tale of female sexual empowerment as it chronicles the attempt of a prostitute to incorporate herself. Then Breillat's writing credits grew in stature: Fellini's E la nave va (And the Ship Sails On) and Maurice Pialat's Police. The latter deals with characteristic Breillat material as it charts the plight of a racist, sexist police detective who is drawn to a sensual, streetwise young woman involved in a drug smuggling case.
Breillat's directorial debut, One vrai jeune fille, spotlights a young teen's fixation on her burgeoning sexuality. However, Breillat really came into her own as a cinematic talent with 36 fillette, which allegedly is autobiographical (and also is based on one of her novels). In her subsequent films, she has not shied away from graphic sexual depictions. Sale comme un ange, her follow-up to 36 fillette, chronicles the relationship between the wife of a young cop and her husband's partner, a self-hating, fifty-year-old police inspector. The sex scenes between the two are as fiercely candid as those in 36 fillette. Parfait amour! is the story of a middle-class divorcee in her late thirties and her disastrous affair with a self-involved man who not only is unsettled but is a decade her junior. In Parfait amour! Breillat also pushes the sexual envelope; the film includes a scene in which a hairbrush is utilized as a sexual apparatus.
Along with 36 fillette, Breillat's highest-profile feature to date is Romance. Here, she explores the erotic desires of Marie, a twenty-something schoolteacher whose boyfriend refuses to have sexual relations with her; summarily, Marie sets out on a sexual odyssey in which she experiments with several different partners. Romance may not be the first mainstream film to feature oral sex, or a woman undergoing a gynecological examination. However, such sequences usually are discreetly filmed; the physical activity is suggested, rather than shown in detail. Yet in Romance, Breillat's staging and camera placement allow the audience an unencumbered view of Caroline Ducey, the actress playing Marie, performing fellatio on Sagamore Stevenin, the actor playing her boyfriend. During the exam sequence, Marie is shown spread-eagled and in full view. And the male nudity in Romance is more than just full-frontal; Breillat shows the erect member of one of Marie's sex partners (played by porn star Rocco Siffredi).
So why is Romance not an exploitation film? The fact that it has been made by a woman filmmaker is an inadequate explanation. After all, a woman is just as capable as a man of directing a film that exists solely to titillate the viewer with hardcore sex scenes. Romance is not pornographic because of the context in which its scenes are presented. Marie is, like Lili in 36 fillette, a sexual being. She is sexually empowered. In a more dated, traditional film depicting relations between men and women—the classics of this type might feature Doris Day and Rock Hudson—the male is the aggressor while the female is sexually withholding, heroically grasping onto her virginity until her wedding night. Yet in Romance, Marie is sexually experienced; she relishes her eroticism, and is anguished by her boyfriend's ambivalence. Breillat illustrates her character's desires by allowing the camera to reveal all during the sex scenes; she depicts Marie's womanhood by her shot selection in the doctors' exam sequence. By making these choices, Breillat presents images that might be disturbing to some, and might not be for all tastes, but that nevertheless feature an honesty and forthrightness that is not so much shocking as liberating.
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Por Rob Edelman.
Fuente: filmreference.com
Catherine Breillat, directora, escritora y guionista, ha publicado 7 libros y dirigido 10 largometrajes* de naturaleza muy personal, donde el erotismo y la provocación se convierten en sus principales señas de identidad.
El primer impacto de Catherine Breillat (1948, región de DeuxSèvres, Francia) en la escena intelectual francesa se produjo cuando publicó la novela "L’homme facile", con 19 años. Mujer eminentemente contemporánea, temperamental y libre, elabora sus guiones a partir de su propia experiencia o de la gente más cercana.
Su obra, inédita en España excepto por la película protagonizada por el actor porno Rocco Sifredi, "Romance X" (1999), muestra a una cineasta que refleja la pasión y el deseo amoroso mediante un estilo caracterizado por la filmación de los cuerpos de una manera muy física, mostrando la belleza y violencia del acto sexual.
Las pulsiones de la carne, en todo su placer y podredumbre, son el objetivo que persigue la cámara de esta directora francesa. Portavoz del nuevo discurso feminista de las dos últimas décadas, Breillat es una cineasta muy respetada que ha sabido pasar por el microscopio el mundo de la pareja. Jugar con los límites de las emociones y los deseos sexuales y sondear las profundidades misteriosas del goce se convierten en prioridades fundamentales a la hora de abordar una nueva película.
Cine y pornografía
Breillat describe las relaciones sexuales entre hombres y mujeres como una lucha violenta, incluso como una ejecución. Sin sentimentalismo ni ternura: sólo importa la búsqueda del placer que a menudo va unido al sufrimiento. Y todo ello sin temer para nada la etiqueta de pornografía. "Es la mirada de la gente, la moral de la gente, como siempre, la que crea la amoralidad y la abyección", declara Breillat, "yo no hago películas porno. Yo quería hacer una película donde no haya censura, ése es el término exacto". Pero para la directora francesa su cine no tiene nada que ver con la pornografía: "Justamente, el porno no es nada realista. En la realidad hay una metafísica de la sexualidad, pero en el porno no hay sino físico. Eso me parece terrible. La lástima es que se llame pornografía lo que no es, porque, después de todo, la verdadera pornografía es algo maravilloso".
Breillat es una cineasta empeñada en transgredir los tabúes. "Estoy a favor del tabú, pero respetarlo no quiere decir que no se le pueda transgredir. Ni romperlo ni prohibirlo. Un ejemplo muy claro: las prohibiciones sexuales. Tabú no quiere decir prohibición ni vergüenza. Es un lugar a fin de cuentas iniciático, ya que curiosamente es el lugar de la transfiguración. Es el lugar más orgánico del cuerpo y como nos provoca miedo, es también un lugar casi maldito. El cine pornográfico trata de decir que la sexualidad se limita a hechos sexuales, a una gimnástica sexual, pero, en realidad, ésta escapa totalmente a la carne. El tabú es el momento en que transformamos ese ritual sexual mecánicamente muy pobre, bastante mediocre, y lo transfiguramos mentalmente en algo inmenso que nos eleva por encima de nosotros mismos hasta hacernos tomar una conciencia superior que deja de ser una conciencia carnal", dice la cineasta.
La directora del polémico filme "Romance X" es también autora de novelas prohibidas y escandalosas desde los 19 años. Desde el principio, Breillat sabía muy bien lo que quería: "Cuando era pequeña, decidí que quería ser escritora y directora de cine, dos cosas que estaban bien separadas en mi cabeza. Yo sabía que eran dos artes distintas. Quizás nací un poco esquizofrénica. Quizás hay demasiada pretensión en querer hacer las dos cosas. Ahora pienso que soy más cineasta y que volveré a ser escritora más tarde, cuando no tenga fuerzas para hacer cine".
Ocho años después de escribir su primera novela, realizó su primera película, "Une vraie jeune fille". Desde entonces, ha dirigido diez películas más, todas escritas por ella, ya sea directamente para el cine o adaptando algunas de sus novelas.
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(*) A fecha de 25/06/2004.
Fuente: comohacercine.com.
Author and filmmaker Catherine Breillat has gained a reputation as one of the most controversial women in contemporary arts and letters for her work, which often focuses on the erotic and emotional lives of young women, as told from the woman's perspective. Born in Bressuire, France, in 1948, Breillat developed a reputation for challenging public mores early on; at the age of 17, she published her first novel, L'homme Facile, which became a cause célèbre for its blunt language and open depiction of sexual subject matter. The controversy generated by L'homme Facile gave Breillat enough recognition that she was able to pursue a career as a writer, and between 1968 and 1975, she published three novels and a stage drama, as well as making her acting debut with a small role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.
In 1975, Breillat moved behind the camera by writing, designing, and directing Une Vraie Jeune Fille, which was adapted from one of Breillat's novels. An unexploitive but unusually explicit depiction of the sexual obsessions of an adolescent girl, Une Vraie Jeune Fille generated a certain amount of controversy, which would doubtless have been greater had it found wide release at the time — financial problems on the part of the film's producers prevented it from receiving a proper launch at the time.
After writing two more films (one of them, significantly, was Bilitis, a drama about the sexual awakening of teenage girls directed by erotic photographer David Hamilton) and taking on another acting role in the horror spoof Dracula Père et Fils, Breillat directed her second feature, 1979's Tapage Nocturne, which was also based on one of her novels. The story concerned the obsessive sexual desires of one young woman, and her unblinking depiction of the theme resulted in the film receiving a rating that prevented anyone under 18 from seeing the film, generally the kiss of death at the French box office.
After directing two films that had garnered plenty of (often hostile) press but very little money, Breillat's career as a director was put on hold. Breillat continued to write screenplays (including Police and Federico Fellini's E La Nave Va), but it wasn't until 1988 that she was in charge of another feature, 36 Fillette. Depicting the burgeoning sexuality of a 14-year-old girl, and a middle-aged man intent on seducing her, 36 Fillette generated the expected storms of controversy, but it also fared well enough at the box office that Breillat was able to make another film only two years later, Sale Comme un Ange.
Breillat's real international breakthrough, though, came in 1999; Romance, concerning a schoolteacher whose relationship with her boyfriend has gone sour, leading her into a variety of sexual liaisons with other men, was one of the first films to play mainstream cinemas in Europe and the United States that clearly depicted explicit intercourse and fellatio, and as a result generated no small amount of press attention. Romance also spawned a number of positive reviews and think pieces in major newspapers and magazines, and finally confirmed Breillat's status as a major filmmaker outside her native France. (The success of Romance also resulted in Une Vraie Jeune Fille finally receiving a belated theatrical and home video release in Europe and the United States.)
Breillat once again revisited her favorite themes with her usual degree of intelligence but bold honesty with 2001's A Ma Soeur, which concerns two sisters — one overweight, one attractive — who are each coming to unhappy terms with their budding sexuality.
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Fuente: All Movie Guide.
A peine âgées de seize ans, Catherine Breillat et sa soeur, la comédienne Marie-Hélène, quittent le domicile familial.
Pour ses débuts de cinéaste, elle décide en 1976 d'adapter un de ses romans, Le Soupirail, qui devient à l'écran Une vraie jeune fille. L'équipe du film est réduite (quatre comédiens issus du porno), et le budget dérisoire. Scandale : le film échappe de justesse au classement X mais écope d'une interdiction au moins de dix huit ans. Il ne sort en salle que quatorze ans plus tard, alors que la critique ne dément toujours pas l'idée que Breillat réalise un cinéma pornographique. Elle s'en défend, là n'est pas son propos : "Le porno n'est pas du cinéma ...", mais il est plutôt de donner une nouvelle définition des femmes et de leurs désirs. Breillat trouve ses inspirations cinématographiques dans les films de son ami Andy Warhol, avec cette "idée d'aller plus loin que ce que le public pouvait supporter".
De Tapage nocturne en 1979 à Romance en 1999, chacun de ses films à été interdit aux moins de 16 ans, mis à part 36 fillette, dont l'interdiction porte au moins de douze ans. Contre cette autorité du Conseil d'Etat, elle tient à résister jusqu'à devenir chef de file des cinéastes contre la censure, lorsque sort sur les écrans le dérangeant Baise-moi (2000) de Virginie Despentes et Coralie Trin Thi.
Elle remporte un réel succès lorsque sort le film Romance. Luttant contre la censure comme en Turquie, elle parvient à installer ce cinéma féministe motivée par le désir de filmer ce que ressentent les femmes, du plaisir à la honte. Le film provoque un réel tapage médiatique, on l'interroge sur le choix d'un célèbre acteur du porno, Rocco Siffredi dans le rôle de l'amant de son actrice Caroline Ducey.
Avec Sex is comedy, elle tente de montrer les rapports qu'entretiennent les réalisateurs avec leurs acteurs en recréant une des scènes d'A ma soeur !, son précédent film. En 2004, elle retrouve Rocco Siffredi dans Anatomie de l'enfer, l'adaptation de son roman Pornocratie.
Catherine Breillat a signé les scénarios de tous ses films, elle a également été la scénariste de plusieurs longs métrages et a ainsi collaboré avec d'importants metteurs en scène, citons : Federico Fellini pour Et vogue le navire, Maurice Pialat et son Police dont elle écrit l'histoire, son amie Christine Pascal (Zanzibar).
Si le cinéma de Catherine Breillat tend à développer un thème unique mais néanmoins complexe : le désir au féminin, elle se distingue de l'ensemble de ses consoeurs cinéastes et s'affiche comme une figure singulière du cinéma français.
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Fuente: allocine.fr.
No sé cómo aplicará Catherine Breillat su discurso en sus novelas, porque no he leído ninguna, pero seguramente no vaya desencaminado si digo que tiene que ser similar al modo en que lo hace en sus películas, con la principal diferencia de que en éstas, el texto hablado o narrado está sumergido en imágenes, mientras que en sus novelas lo estará seguramente —y pocas opciones más hay, la verdad— entre más y más texto. En este caso, decir que el texto se sumerge en imágenes no insinúa que se ahogue en ellas, más bien al contrario. A medida que Breillat ha ido aumentando su filmografía, una cierta tendencia a verbalizar ha ido acusándose proporcionalmente. Y eso que, con Breillat, al principio no fue el verbo —olvidemos que publicó su primera novela con 17—; con Breillat, al principio, fue el melodrama. Puede que el verbo ya estuviera allí, sí, pero más calladamente. Su cine aún podía respirar, y sus personajes también. Los circunloquios psicosexuales de la realizadora-autora se transmutaban en escenas cinematográficas que, de cuando en cuando, dejaban entrever su verdadera naturaleza verbal, pero que seguían vestidas de cine puro, por más que sus actrices y actores se desnudaran exponiendo detalladamente sus genitales en planos médicos.
Aun en Brève traversée, que cuenta con numerosas peroratas que generalizan sobre la naturaleza del hombre e iniciden sobre la inabarcable complejidad del sexo femenino, sus cuitas, contradicciones —o, mejor dicho, paradojas—, emergen algunas de las escenas con tanta presencia y solidez visual —cinematográfica— que parecen querer luchar contra ese afán cerebral de Breillat de intelectualizar lo poético o hacer poesía de lo intelectual, partiendo siempre de un análisis de la psicología femenina, y que amenaza en algún punto crítico con colapsarse en su propia ambición.
Cuando este discurso se hace poderoso y predominante, el cine se asusta. En Anatomie de l'enfer, Breillat toca extremos. A la voz de sus personajes suma la suya propia, la de narradora, la que modela el conjunto y crea contexto, como si se hubiese apoderado de ella una suerte de horror vacui verbal. Mientras tanto, sus actores recitan, se despojan de vestiduras y representan las escenas de amor físico más antieróticas que se puedan esperar, pues no hay nada más antierótico que que las experiencias de la carne pasadas por el alambique de lo intelectual y verbalizado —que no necesariamente racionalizado—, tanto más si este filtro está cargado de pesimismo, confusión, contradicción y de los abismos insalvables de la insatisfacción y la incomunicación —y ello como punto de partida natural, no como la consecuencia de algo. Todo un regalo para el espectador, que asiste exasperado al tormento de los personajes, preguntándose a veces si no será todo demasiado exagerado, si acaso la directora no estará haciendo algo difícil, imposible de sobrellevar, constantemente sometido a análisis, de algo natural y, cuando no necesariamente fácil, sí al menos soportable y superable como uno de tantos trámites que la vida obliga a hacer —sea esto la percepción de sí misma, en el caso de Anatomie de l'enfer, sea la pérdida de la virginidad (36 fillette, À ma soeur!), sea el descubrimiento del erotismo y del deseo (Une vraie jeune fille), sea el rodaje de una escena de sexo (Sex Is Comedy).
Puede que el próximo cine de Catherine Breillat no esté tan impregnado de esa inaccesibilidad poético-intelectual que venía haciéndose cada vez más tangible y ruidosa. El hecho de que sus últimos trabajos sean o vayan a ser adaptaciones de otros autores literarios dice bastante en favor de esta tesis. O puede que me equivoque completamente y veamos a Breillat imponiendo implacablemente su forma de hacer entre las líneas de Charles Perrault, Honoré de Balzac o Barbey d'Aurevilly. Motivos para alimentar la curiosidad no faltan.
En cualquier caso, y sea como sea la futura Catherine Breillat, he de confesar que en todos y cada uno de sus filmes acabé, antes o después, descubriendo algo por lo que indiscutiblemente merecían ser vistos. Como espectador, cuento ya con unos cuantos momentos inolvidables más.
HumbertHumbert.FILMOGRAFÍA DE CATHERINE BREILLAT, DE UN VISTAZOBut, of course, this formulation is only half right. Her films are, as I have said, uniquely concerned with a woman's understanding of her own sexuality.
Brève traversée.The representation of this sexual reckoning encompasses a wide range of issues including the adolescent obsession with the loss of virginity, in films like Une vraie jeune fille (1975) and 36 Fillette (1988); a woman's (possibly) masochistic relation to sex in Romance (1999); and the seemingly unbridgeable sexual and emotional gulf between an older woman and a younger man, in Parfait amour! (1996) and Brève traversée (2001). However, the films are also sexually explicit; contrary to Breillat's assertion, sex is an object as well as a subject in her films. Moreover, the sexual acts on display in Breillat's films are not only explicit, they are often unsimulated, a characteristic of her films that has contributed to her unflattering (in my view) international reputation as the auteur of porn. For Breillat, the visual display of sex is inseparable from the representation of the consciousness of her female characters. The representation of sex is also central to the development of her visual style —a level of innovation that has been grossly overlooked in contemporary film culture. And herein lies both the challenge and the controversy of her work.
Catherine Breillat's preoccupation with the representation of female sexuality began very early in her artistic career. Breillat began as a writer, publishing her first novel, L'homme facile, when she was just 17. Ironically, the book was banned for readers under the age of 18 in France for its explicit and transgressive sexual content, thus initiating Breillat into a lifetime of controversy. Breillat would quickly gain a reputation as the female De Sade, the new Bataille —a purveyor of transgressive sexuality. Breillat went on to publish seven novels and one play, many of which she would herself adapt to the screen.
Breillat transitioned to filmmaking in 1975 with an adaptation of her fourth novel, Le Soupirail, retitled Une vraie jeune fille. Standing in between this transition from novelist to director was a brief, but no doubt highly influential, acting stint. In 1972, Breillat appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, playing a character named Mouchette.
Charlotte Alexandra en Une vraie jeune fille.Bertolucci could not have chosen this name more wisely, drawn, as it is, from the eponymous protagonist of Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1966). Bresson's Mouchette, a very young, utterly disenfranchised girl who is both sexually precocious, sexually abused, and suicidal, was likely a template for many of Breillat's own tortured adolescents. But Bertolucci's film, which centers on the emotional anguish of an American man in Paris who begins an anonymous and transgressive affair in a empty, dilapidated Paris flat, was no doubt a major influence on Breillat's representation of sexuality. Indeed, in 36 Fillette, Breillat cast Jean-Pierre Léaud, who also had a brief role in Last Tango in Paris. And, of course, the censorship problems that Bertolucci faced with Last Tango in Paris, for its representation of sodomy, amongst other things, were ones with which Breillat would become increasingly familiar.
Breillat's first film did not see the light of day until twenty-five years later, when it was released in France in 2000. Une vraie jeune fille was shelved by its backers for, once again, its transgressive look at the sexual awakening of an adolescent girl. And it is not so hard to see why. Une vraie jeune fille is an awkward film. It represents Breillat at her most Bataillesque, freely mingling abstract images of female genitalia, mud, and rodents into this otherwise realist account of a young girl's sexual awakening. In her summary of Susan Sontag's defense of a literary strain of pornography, Linda Williams offers what stands as an apt description of Breillat's approach in Une vraie jeune fille, where an “elitist, avant-garde, intellectual, and philosophical pornography of imagination [is pitted against] the mundane, crass materialism of a dominant mass culture.” There is no way, in other words, to integrate this film into a commodity driven system of distribution. It does not offer visual pleasure, at least not one that comes without intellectual engagement, and, more importantly, rigorous self-examination—hence Breillat's assertion that sex is the subject, not the object, of her work.
The difficulty of Breillat's work—that is, her steadfast refusal to make conventionally erotic images, or films, for that matter, which don't deal with sex at all—has lead to a myriad of censorship problems. Her second film, Tapage Nocturne(1979), which also details the sexual longing of a young woman, and was adapted from her novel of the same name, also met with censorship. Although the film was released, access to it was forbidden
Cartel de Romance
Romance, and the world-wide discourse about pornography that erupted in the wake of its release, best typifies the challenge and the interest of her work. Romance is about a woman, Marie, whose boyfriend refuses to have sex with her. Her frustration leads her to a series of affairs in an effort to not only find pleasure, but seemingly to arrive at some better understanding of her own desire. The film is sexually explicit, and features, as do many of Breillat's films, acts of unsimulated sex, hence the many accusations leveled against Breillat that she is a pornographer. Indeed, Breillat willfully courted such accusations by casting Rocco Siffredi, a famous Italian porn star, as one of Marie's lovers. Moreover, Marie's sexual encounters are marked by a sense of sadomasochism. Indeed, after having her baby she winds up with a man who is also the principal of the school where she teaches, having blown up her apartment and her boyfriend (who is also, presumably, the father of her child) on the way to the hospital.
Romance was banned in Australia upon its release in January 2000. In his review of the Office of Film and Literature's (OFLC) report on the film, Adrian Martin describes the reason for the ban. And in so doing, Martin arrives at precisely the thing that makes Breillat's films so difficult, and so interesting. Martin surveys the censors' objection to the scene where Marie is solicited by a man in the hallway of her building. In this scene, a man offers Marie twenty-dollars to perform cunnilingus on her, to which she assents without saying a word. Of course, more occurs, as Marie is turned over (or turns over) as her perpetrator then enters her from behind. As he continues, Marie seems to sob, and when he leaves, she shouts that she is not ashamed. Martin notes that in describing the scene, the writer of the OFLC report says that “he orders Marie to turn over,” and that she tries to “scuffle away.” Martin replies, “…I did not see Marie try to 'scuffle away' during the scene, or be forced to turn over.” Martin's point is that this writer's language reveals his own moral response to an image, as opposed to what is actually present in the image: “One of the most interesting things about Romance is the way in which it inscribes in its own material ambiguous designation of obscenity.” In other words, neither Breillat nor Caroline Ducey (Marie) give us any concrete signs of her own response to what is happening. We cannot walk away confident of Marie's outrage, only our own, at best. Indeed, the whole scene begins with a voice-over where Marie proclaims that it is, in fact, her fantasy to be taken this way. Yet, the act itself is inscribed into the realist space of the plot, thus blurring the line between fantasy and reality that is signaled by Marie's voice-over.
As such, when we watch this act on screen, and many others like it, we are left only with what we think of what we see. Moreover, we project our own values back on to the screen, as Martin further notes when he cites a review of the film that describes the scene between Marie and Rocco Siffredi as a “humiliating affair.” Of course, there is, to my eyes, no signs of humiliation in that scene. If anything, it is a frank and very physical depiction of a sexual encounter. Siffredi asks Marie if he can have anal sex with her, an act that stands as the possible source of said humiliation. However, this possibility is complicated by the fact that she very calmly consents, on the condition that he first continue to make love to her. Moreover, the scene begins with Marie telling Siffredi, while holding a soiled condom, how men like to keep things hidden —how easily they are disgusted. The only sign of shame in the sequence comes when she admits to Siffredi, in the middle of sex, that she only sleeps with men that she doesn't like. If there is shame here, it is the viewer's.
And that's just the point. Breillat exposes us to sexual encounters, often very volatile ones, but does not tell us what to think about them. She does not, I believe, judge her characters, or their desires. But that does not mean, however, that Breillat's images and characters are necessarily removed from moral consideration. Rather, the opacity of
Roxane Mesquida y Anaïs Reboux en À ma soeur!
This resistance to simple, and therefore limiting, character comprehension, is the key to Breillat's films, all of which stands as efforts to represent the consciousness of her female characters in extremely complex terms. She does not afford us the easy access to the mind of women that one finds in mainstream film where a woman's consciousness is always externalized. Breillat is very clear about this, as she has said:
There is no masculine psychology in my cinema. There is only the resentments and desires of women. A man should not attempt to recognize himself in my male characters. On the other hand, he can find [in the films] a better understanding of women. And knowledge of the other is the highest goal.
Therein lies one of the chief virtues of Breillat's work, and the very trait that makes it just as important for men as it is for women. In refusing to represent male psychology in any significant way, Breillat not only refuses to reinforce conventional patterns of identification, but asks that men learn something about women; or at the very least, the male spectator is refused easy signs of character psychology. However, Breillat's innovations are by no means limited to questions of identification and character psychology —though these questions do stand at the center.
One of the unfortunate consequences of Breillat's reputation as the auteur of porn is that it has obscured the much more interesting fact of her engagement with the history of modernist filmmaking. Breillat is a central figure in European film culture. In addition to her stint in the Bertolucci film, Breillat has written screenplays for directors such as Maurice Pialat (Police, 1985), Federico Fellini (And the Ship Sails On, 1983), Liliana Cavani (The Skin, 1981) and many others. Likewise, her own films have shown an interest in the expansion of genre, a major characteristic of European modernist filmmaking, as in her renovation of the policier in Sale comme un ange (1991). Moreover, Breillat is vocal about the filmmakers who have shaped her conception of cinema, consistently praising the work of figures such as Warhol, Pasolini, Oshima, Dreyer, and Bresson —all of whom can be felt in Breillat's films in very interesting ways.
Perhaps the largest influence on Breillat's work is to be found in Italian neorealism, or at least in the idea of neorealism. Breillat's films often move quite slowly. She prefers long takes with few camera set-ups. She is very interested in documenting the quotidian, more fond of watching a young girl walking down the street than she is in setting that same character before an easily resolved conflict in an effort to keep the narrative moving. In this sense, Breillat gets much closer to Zavattini's famous idea about neorealism and what it would replace:
…the most important innovation, of what is called neorealism, it seems to me, is to have realized that the necessity of the 'story' was only an unconscious way of disguising human defeat, and that the kind of imagination it involved was simply a technique of superimposing dead formulas over living social facts.
In the case of Breillat, this realist tendency is always put in the service of living social facts. Indeed, the sexuality on display in her films is well described by the idea of “living social facts.” For example, in À ma soeur!, there is a scene where Elena invites her newly acquired Italian boyfriend to sneak into her bedroom at night. Elena, of course, shares this room with Anaïs. The scene involves Fernando begging and often coercing Elena to sleep with him. And their sexual foreplay is performed, most awkwardly, in front of Anaïs, who only pretends to be sleeping. The scene lasts well over ten minutes and is filmed largely in medium shots done in long takes. Moreover, this scene of sexual initiation is, of course, a major interest of contemporary Hollywood film (think American Pie [Weitz & Weitz, 1999]). However, the sexual exchange documented here is slow, clumsy, and very confused. Gone is the mainstream film's attempt to represent sex, even teenage sex, as something unnaturally fluid, graceful, or amusing. Breillat replaces that conception of sex with a very realist representation of an unknowing, confused adolescent sexual experience. Zavattini's 'dead formula' is absent. As such, Breillat manages a level of realism largely absent from actual neorealist film.
Breillat's films are also characterized by a high degree of reflexivity, thus further signaling her indebtedness to European modernism. This reflexive tendency of her work often confronts the realist dimension of her filmmaking in interesting ways. [SPOILER] For example, Parfait amour! begins with documentary-like footage featuring the male protagonist of the film, who will ultimately kill his older girlfriend, re-enacting his
Etienne Chicot y Delphine Zentout en 36 fillette
Along the same lines, Breillat is also one of the most important colorists working in film today. That is, she often uses color not only naturalistically, but as an important form of signification. For example, in 36 Fillette, the young girl finally agrees to go to the hotel room of her older, rich male suitor. This character, of course, bears a striking resemblance to Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. What takes place in this hotel room, however, is a reversal of that sexual anguish. Instead of watching a man tortured by what he takes to be his own perversity, we witness in Breillat's film a long scene of a young girl trying to figure out —and often changing her mind about— what she wants from this man. Breillat uses color marvelously here. The hotel sits on a beach front. Breillat films the room with blue light and a tannish, orange décor. These are, of course, the colors of the beach: the outside world of the beach itself —blue water, tan sand— is replicated on the inside. And thus a level of tension and analysis is added to the image, as we are reminded that this potential coupling, and deflowering, is taking place in the context of a summer vacation. Whimsy and high seriousness are inextricably linked; sex once again is treated as a subject even while it remains an object. And in coloring this scene so markedly, Breillat can make further reference to Last Tango in Paris, which is famous for cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's use of color, a scheme he borrowed from the paintings of Francis Bacon.
Breillat's work is obviously the product of a major auteur. Her dismissal as the auteur of porn, then, speaks volumes. For one, it excludes her from the accolades with which her male counterparts have long been lavished, and to whom she bears a resemblance. But also, to deny the importance of Breillat's work, to relegate her to a realm outside of art, would be to demand that art merely confirm our ways of thinking instead of challenging them. And this is, I would imagine, what Breillat had in mind when she told an interviewer, “I don't really think about my audience very much.” The point, in other words, is not to satisfy expectations, but to confound them. And thus new ideas, new ways of seeing, can emerge.
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© Brian Price, November 2002 [Brian Price recently completed a PhD in cinema studies at New York University, where he currently teaches courses on film and writing. He is also Assistant Editor of Framework.]
Fuente: sensesofcinema.com (léase el artículo allí para disponer de las referencias bibliográficas).
It is not so much her subject matter that makes novelist/actressturned-director/screenwriter Catherine Breillat so provocative and controversial. Rather, it is the manner in which she depicts that subject matter, the choices she makes as a filmmaker as she portrays her characters and their sexual longings. None of the liaisons in Breillat's films are "traditional," because of the age differences between the characters or their stations in life. Their unions are injurious and obsessive, with Breillat not holding back in any way as she explores the manner in which duplicity, contrition, and rejection kindle sexual yearning. Her primary focus most often is on her female characters and their carnal appetites. In this regard, Breillat has spent her directorial career re-making the same film (albeit with heroines ranging in age from adolescence through early middle-age).
With boring regularity, Hollywood has churned out films focusing on teen-agers and their rampaging hormones. Yet Breillat's 36 fillette is a different, and decidedly more adult, take on this theme. Breillat tells the story of Lili, a restless, alienated fourteen-year-old who attracts the attention of several men—and, in particular, a middle-aged playboy—while on vacation with her family. As the story unfolds, the question arises: Will she or won't she lose her virginity?
What sets 36 fillette apart from other teen coming-of-age films is the way in which Breillat presents her lead character. Lili's sexual curiosity does not lead her to boys her own age; instead, she is involved with males who might be her father. The focus of the story is on her, and not her potential sexual partners; she is depicted as being just as much of a sexual predator as any male. Despite her age and lack of sexual experience, Lili is no tentative, blushing innocent. Neither is she a sexual victim. She is instead an indecisive young woman whose fully developed body mirrors her craving for sexual initiation. As Breillat explores the social and sexual realities of the character, the men with whom she deals serve as mere props; they exist solely as a means for Lili to explore the power of her emerging sexuality. And the sexuality Breillat portrays is explicit; her character's tender age is no excuse for the filmmaker to cut away from actress Delphine Zentout's voluptuous body during the film's sex scenes. 36 fillette—and, for that matter, all of Breillat's films—may not be in the same artistic league as the all-time-best cinematic chronicles of sexuality and desire, adolescent or otherwise. What sets them apart are the choices the filmmaker makes for her lead characters, and the candid manner in which she portrays their sexuality.
Breillat began her career as a novelist, and was a published author while still in her teens; because of its salty language, her first book, L'Homme facile, was the subject of controversy in her native France. She started out in cinema as an actress—fittingly, she had a role in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris—and then co-scripted such inconsequential sexploitation films as Michel Boisrond's Catherine et Cie and David Hamilton's Bilitis. Despite its trite handing, Catherine etCie does offer up a tale of female sexual empowerment as it chronicles the attempt of a prostitute to incorporate herself. Then Breillat's writing credits grew in stature: Fellini's E la nave va (And the Ship Sails On) and Maurice Pialat's Police. The latter deals with characteristic Breillat material as it charts the plight of a racist, sexist police detective who is drawn to a sensual, streetwise young woman involved in a drug smuggling case.
Breillat's directorial debut, One vrai jeune fille, spotlights a young teen's fixation on her burgeoning sexuality. However, Breillat really came into her own as a cinematic talent with 36 fillette, which allegedly is autobiographical (and also is based on one of her novels). In her subsequent films, she has not shied away from graphic sexual depictions. Sale comme un ange, her follow-up to 36 fillette, chronicles the relationship between the wife of a young cop and her husband's partner, a self-hating, fifty-year-old police inspector. The sex scenes between the two are as fiercely candid as those in 36 fillette. Parfait amour! is the story of a middle-class divorcee in her late thirties and her disastrous affair with a self-involved man who not only is unsettled but is a decade her junior. In Parfait amour! Breillat also pushes the sexual envelope; the film includes a scene in which a hairbrush is utilized as a sexual apparatus.
Along with 36 fillette, Breillat's highest-profile feature to date is Romance. Here, she explores the erotic desires of Marie, a twenty-something schoolteacher whose boyfriend refuses to have sexual relations with her; summarily, Marie sets out on a sexual odyssey in which she experiments with several different partners. Romance may not be the first mainstream film to feature oral sex, or a woman undergoing a gynecological examination. However, such sequences usually are discreetly filmed; the physical activity is suggested, rather than shown in detail. Yet in Romance, Breillat's staging and camera placement allow the audience an unencumbered view of Caroline Ducey, the actress playing Marie, performing fellatio on Sagamore Stevenin, the actor playing her boyfriend. During the exam sequence, Marie is shown spread-eagled and in full view. And the male nudity in Romance is more than just full-frontal; Breillat shows the erect member of one of Marie's sex partners (played by porn star Rocco Siffredi).
So why is Romance not an exploitation film? The fact that it has been made by a woman filmmaker is an inadequate explanation. After all, a woman is just as capable as a man of directing a film that exists solely to titillate the viewer with hardcore sex scenes. Romance is not pornographic because of the context in which its scenes are presented. Marie is, like Lili in 36 fillette, a sexual being. She is sexually empowered. In a more dated, traditional film depicting relations between men and women—the classics of this type might feature Doris Day and Rock Hudson—the male is the aggressor while the female is sexually withholding, heroically grasping onto her virginity until her wedding night. Yet in Romance, Marie is sexually experienced; she relishes her eroticism, and is anguished by her boyfriend's ambivalence. Breillat illustrates her character's desires by allowing the camera to reveal all during the sex scenes; she depicts Marie's womanhood by her shot selection in the doctors' exam sequence. By making these choices, Breillat presents images that might be disturbing to some, and might not be for all tastes, but that nevertheless feature an honesty and forthrightness that is not so much shocking as liberating.
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Por Rob Edelman.
Fuente: filmreference.com
Catherine Breillat, directora, escritora y guionista, ha publicado 7 libros y dirigido 10 largometrajes* de naturaleza muy personal, donde el erotismo y la provocación se convierten en sus principales señas de identidad.
El primer impacto de Catherine Breillat (1948, región de DeuxSèvres, Francia) en la escena intelectual francesa se produjo cuando publicó la novela "L’homme facile", con 19 años. Mujer eminentemente contemporánea, temperamental y libre, elabora sus guiones a partir de su propia experiencia o de la gente más cercana.
Su obra, inédita en España excepto por la película protagonizada por el actor porno Rocco Sifredi, "Romance X" (1999), muestra a una cineasta que refleja la pasión y el deseo amoroso mediante un estilo caracterizado por la filmación de los cuerpos de una manera muy física, mostrando la belleza y violencia del acto sexual.
Las pulsiones de la carne, en todo su placer y podredumbre, son el objetivo que persigue la cámara de esta directora francesa. Portavoz del nuevo discurso feminista de las dos últimas décadas, Breillat es una cineasta muy respetada que ha sabido pasar por el microscopio el mundo de la pareja. Jugar con los límites de las emociones y los deseos sexuales y sondear las profundidades misteriosas del goce se convierten en prioridades fundamentales a la hora de abordar una nueva película.
Cine y pornografía
Breillat describe las relaciones sexuales entre hombres y mujeres como una lucha violenta, incluso como una ejecución. Sin sentimentalismo ni ternura: sólo importa la búsqueda del placer que a menudo va unido al sufrimiento. Y todo ello sin temer para nada la etiqueta de pornografía. "Es la mirada de la gente, la moral de la gente, como siempre, la que crea la amoralidad y la abyección", declara Breillat, "yo no hago películas porno. Yo quería hacer una película donde no haya censura, ése es el término exacto". Pero para la directora francesa su cine no tiene nada que ver con la pornografía: "Justamente, el porno no es nada realista. En la realidad hay una metafísica de la sexualidad, pero en el porno no hay sino físico. Eso me parece terrible. La lástima es que se llame pornografía lo que no es, porque, después de todo, la verdadera pornografía es algo maravilloso".
Breillat es una cineasta empeñada en transgredir los tabúes. "Estoy a favor del tabú, pero respetarlo no quiere decir que no se le pueda transgredir. Ni romperlo ni prohibirlo. Un ejemplo muy claro: las prohibiciones sexuales. Tabú no quiere decir prohibición ni vergüenza. Es un lugar a fin de cuentas iniciático, ya que curiosamente es el lugar de la transfiguración. Es el lugar más orgánico del cuerpo y como nos provoca miedo, es también un lugar casi maldito. El cine pornográfico trata de decir que la sexualidad se limita a hechos sexuales, a una gimnástica sexual, pero, en realidad, ésta escapa totalmente a la carne. El tabú es el momento en que transformamos ese ritual sexual mecánicamente muy pobre, bastante mediocre, y lo transfiguramos mentalmente en algo inmenso que nos eleva por encima de nosotros mismos hasta hacernos tomar una conciencia superior que deja de ser una conciencia carnal", dice la cineasta.
La directora del polémico filme "Romance X" es también autora de novelas prohibidas y escandalosas desde los 19 años. Desde el principio, Breillat sabía muy bien lo que quería: "Cuando era pequeña, decidí que quería ser escritora y directora de cine, dos cosas que estaban bien separadas en mi cabeza. Yo sabía que eran dos artes distintas. Quizás nací un poco esquizofrénica. Quizás hay demasiada pretensión en querer hacer las dos cosas. Ahora pienso que soy más cineasta y que volveré a ser escritora más tarde, cuando no tenga fuerzas para hacer cine".
Ocho años después de escribir su primera novela, realizó su primera película, "Une vraie jeune fille". Desde entonces, ha dirigido diez películas más, todas escritas por ella, ya sea directamente para el cine o adaptando algunas de sus novelas.
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(*) A fecha de 25/06/2004.
Fuente: comohacercine.com.
Author and filmmaker Catherine Breillat has gained a reputation as one of the most controversial women in contemporary arts and letters for her work, which often focuses on the erotic and emotional lives of young women, as told from the woman's perspective. Born in Bressuire, France, in 1948, Breillat developed a reputation for challenging public mores early on; at the age of 17, she published her first novel, L'homme Facile, which became a cause célèbre for its blunt language and open depiction of sexual subject matter. The controversy generated by L'homme Facile gave Breillat enough recognition that she was able to pursue a career as a writer, and between 1968 and 1975, she published three novels and a stage drama, as well as making her acting debut with a small role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.
In 1975, Breillat moved behind the camera by writing, designing, and directing Une Vraie Jeune Fille, which was adapted from one of Breillat's novels. An unexploitive but unusually explicit depiction of the sexual obsessions of an adolescent girl, Une Vraie Jeune Fille generated a certain amount of controversy, which would doubtless have been greater had it found wide release at the time — financial problems on the part of the film's producers prevented it from receiving a proper launch at the time.
After writing two more films (one of them, significantly, was Bilitis, a drama about the sexual awakening of teenage girls directed by erotic photographer David Hamilton) and taking on another acting role in the horror spoof Dracula Père et Fils, Breillat directed her second feature, 1979's Tapage Nocturne, which was also based on one of her novels. The story concerned the obsessive sexual desires of one young woman, and her unblinking depiction of the theme resulted in the film receiving a rating that prevented anyone under 18 from seeing the film, generally the kiss of death at the French box office.
After directing two films that had garnered plenty of (often hostile) press but very little money, Breillat's career as a director was put on hold. Breillat continued to write screenplays (including Police and Federico Fellini's E La Nave Va), but it wasn't until 1988 that she was in charge of another feature, 36 Fillette. Depicting the burgeoning sexuality of a 14-year-old girl, and a middle-aged man intent on seducing her, 36 Fillette generated the expected storms of controversy, but it also fared well enough at the box office that Breillat was able to make another film only two years later, Sale Comme un Ange.
Breillat's real international breakthrough, though, came in 1999; Romance, concerning a schoolteacher whose relationship with her boyfriend has gone sour, leading her into a variety of sexual liaisons with other men, was one of the first films to play mainstream cinemas in Europe and the United States that clearly depicted explicit intercourse and fellatio, and as a result generated no small amount of press attention. Romance also spawned a number of positive reviews and think pieces in major newspapers and magazines, and finally confirmed Breillat's status as a major filmmaker outside her native France. (The success of Romance also resulted in Une Vraie Jeune Fille finally receiving a belated theatrical and home video release in Europe and the United States.)
Breillat once again revisited her favorite themes with her usual degree of intelligence but bold honesty with 2001's A Ma Soeur, which concerns two sisters — one overweight, one attractive — who are each coming to unhappy terms with their budding sexuality.
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Fuente: All Movie Guide.
A peine âgées de seize ans, Catherine Breillat et sa soeur, la comédienne Marie-Hélène, quittent le domicile familial.
Pour ses débuts de cinéaste, elle décide en 1976 d'adapter un de ses romans, Le Soupirail, qui devient à l'écran Une vraie jeune fille. L'équipe du film est réduite (quatre comédiens issus du porno), et le budget dérisoire. Scandale : le film échappe de justesse au classement X mais écope d'une interdiction au moins de dix huit ans. Il ne sort en salle que quatorze ans plus tard, alors que la critique ne dément toujours pas l'idée que Breillat réalise un cinéma pornographique. Elle s'en défend, là n'est pas son propos : "Le porno n'est pas du cinéma ...", mais il est plutôt de donner une nouvelle définition des femmes et de leurs désirs. Breillat trouve ses inspirations cinématographiques dans les films de son ami Andy Warhol, avec cette "idée d'aller plus loin que ce que le public pouvait supporter".
De Tapage nocturne en 1979 à Romance en 1999, chacun de ses films à été interdit aux moins de 16 ans, mis à part 36 fillette, dont l'interdiction porte au moins de douze ans. Contre cette autorité du Conseil d'Etat, elle tient à résister jusqu'à devenir chef de file des cinéastes contre la censure, lorsque sort sur les écrans le dérangeant Baise-moi (2000) de Virginie Despentes et Coralie Trin Thi.
Elle remporte un réel succès lorsque sort le film Romance. Luttant contre la censure comme en Turquie, elle parvient à installer ce cinéma féministe motivée par le désir de filmer ce que ressentent les femmes, du plaisir à la honte. Le film provoque un réel tapage médiatique, on l'interroge sur le choix d'un célèbre acteur du porno, Rocco Siffredi dans le rôle de l'amant de son actrice Caroline Ducey.
Avec Sex is comedy, elle tente de montrer les rapports qu'entretiennent les réalisateurs avec leurs acteurs en recréant une des scènes d'A ma soeur !, son précédent film. En 2004, elle retrouve Rocco Siffredi dans Anatomie de l'enfer, l'adaptation de son roman Pornocratie.
Catherine Breillat a signé les scénarios de tous ses films, elle a également été la scénariste de plusieurs longs métrages et a ainsi collaboré avec d'importants metteurs en scène, citons : Federico Fellini pour Et vogue le navire, Maurice Pialat et son Police dont elle écrit l'histoire, son amie Christine Pascal (Zanzibar).
Si le cinéma de Catherine Breillat tend à développer un thème unique mais néanmoins complexe : le désir au féminin, elle se distingue de l'ensemble de ses consoeurs cinéastes et s'affiche comme une figure singulière du cinéma français.
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Fuente: allocine.fr.
No sé cómo aplicará Catherine Breillat su discurso en sus novelas, porque no he leído ninguna, pero seguramente no vaya desencaminado si digo que tiene que ser similar al modo en que lo hace en sus películas, con la principal diferencia de que en éstas, el texto hablado o narrado está sumergido en imágenes, mientras que en sus novelas lo estará seguramente —y pocas opciones más hay, la verdad— entre más y más texto. En este caso, decir que el texto se sumerge en imágenes no insinúa que se ahogue en ellas, más bien al contrario. A medida que Breillat ha ido aumentando su filmografía, una cierta tendencia a verbalizar ha ido acusándose proporcionalmente. Y eso que, con Breillat, al principio no fue el verbo —olvidemos que publicó su primera novela con 17—; con Breillat, al principio, fue el melodrama. Puede que el verbo ya estuviera allí, sí, pero más calladamente. Su cine aún podía respirar, y sus personajes también. Los circunloquios psicosexuales de la realizadora-autora se transmutaban en escenas cinematográficas que, de cuando en cuando, dejaban entrever su verdadera naturaleza verbal, pero que seguían vestidas de cine puro, por más que sus actrices y actores se desnudaran exponiendo detalladamente sus genitales en planos médicos.
Aun en Brève traversée, que cuenta con numerosas peroratas que generalizan sobre la naturaleza del hombre e iniciden sobre la inabarcable complejidad del sexo femenino, sus cuitas, contradicciones —o, mejor dicho, paradojas—, emergen algunas de las escenas con tanta presencia y solidez visual —cinematográfica— que parecen querer luchar contra ese afán cerebral de Breillat de intelectualizar lo poético o hacer poesía de lo intelectual, partiendo siempre de un análisis de la psicología femenina, y que amenaza en algún punto crítico con colapsarse en su propia ambición.
Cuando este discurso se hace poderoso y predominante, el cine se asusta. En Anatomie de l'enfer, Breillat toca extremos. A la voz de sus personajes suma la suya propia, la de narradora, la que modela el conjunto y crea contexto, como si se hubiese apoderado de ella una suerte de horror vacui verbal. Mientras tanto, sus actores recitan, se despojan de vestiduras y representan las escenas de amor físico más antieróticas que se puedan esperar, pues no hay nada más antierótico que que las experiencias de la carne pasadas por el alambique de lo intelectual y verbalizado —que no necesariamente racionalizado—, tanto más si este filtro está cargado de pesimismo, confusión, contradicción y de los abismos insalvables de la insatisfacción y la incomunicación —y ello como punto de partida natural, no como la consecuencia de algo. Todo un regalo para el espectador, que asiste exasperado al tormento de los personajes, preguntándose a veces si no será todo demasiado exagerado, si acaso la directora no estará haciendo algo difícil, imposible de sobrellevar, constantemente sometido a análisis, de algo natural y, cuando no necesariamente fácil, sí al menos soportable y superable como uno de tantos trámites que la vida obliga a hacer —sea esto la percepción de sí misma, en el caso de Anatomie de l'enfer, sea la pérdida de la virginidad (36 fillette, À ma soeur!), sea el descubrimiento del erotismo y del deseo (Une vraie jeune fille), sea el rodaje de una escena de sexo (Sex Is Comedy).
Puede que el próximo cine de Catherine Breillat no esté tan impregnado de esa inaccesibilidad poético-intelectual que venía haciéndose cada vez más tangible y ruidosa. El hecho de que sus últimos trabajos sean o vayan a ser adaptaciones de otros autores literarios dice bastante en favor de esta tesis. O puede que me equivoque completamente y veamos a Breillat imponiendo implacablemente su forma de hacer entre las líneas de Charles Perrault, Honoré de Balzac o Barbey d'Aurevilly. Motivos para alimentar la curiosidad no faltan.
En cualquier caso, y sea como sea la futura Catherine Breillat, he de confesar que en todos y cada uno de sus filmes acabé, antes o después, descubriendo algo por lo que indiscutiblemente merecían ser vistos. Como espectador, cuento ya con unos cuantos momentos inolvidables más.
Como directora (Enlaces a las fichas correspondientes):
[1979] Tapage nocturne
[1988] 36 fillette
[1991] Sale comme un ange
[1995] Aux Niçois qui mal y pensent (corto)
[1996] Parfait amour!
[1999] Romance
[2001] À ma soeur!
[2001] Brève traversée
[2002] Sex Is Comedy
[2004] Anatomie de l'enfer
[2007] Une vieille maîtresse
[200?] La Fille aux yeux d'or
[200?] Barbe bleueComo guionista (o co-guionista, etc.) en películas dirigidas por otros (Enlaces a IMDb):
[1977] Bilitis
[1981] La pelle
[1983] E la nave va
[1984] L'araignée de satin
[1985] Police
[1987] Milan noir
[1989] Zanzibar
[1990] Le Diable au corps
[1990] Aventure de Catherine C.
[1991] La Thune
[1992] La nuit de l'océan
[1993] Le secret d'Elissa Rhaïs
[1993] Couples et amants
[1997] Viens jouer dans la cour des grands
[2000] Selon MatthieuComo actriz (Enlaces a IMDb y a fichas):
[1973] Le dialogue dans le marécage
[1976] Dracula père et fils
[2002] Une femme de ménage
[2004] Anatomie de l'enfer (narradora)
INFORMACIÓN EN LA WEB
Diverso:
www.sensesofcinema.com
www.filmreference.com
Wikipedia en francés
Wikipedia en inglés
Productoras/Distribuidoras:
www.rezofilms.comConsultas filmográficas:
www.cinemotions.com
www.cinefiches.com
cineuropa.org
Catherine Breillat - Une Vraie Jeune Fille (Charlotte Alexandra) - 1976.avi
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