The Last Mistress (2007)
Filmmaker(s): Catherine Breillat
Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.
Bluebeard (2009)
Filmmaker(s): Catherine Breillat
Anne (Daphné Baiwir) reads her younger sister, Marie-Catherine (Lola Créton), the story of Bluebeard. In 17th-century France, another set of sisters — also named Anne and Marie-Catherine — are left impoverished by their father's death. Marie-Catherine dreams of marrying into money, and soon falls for wealthy divorcé Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas). Grateful for the chance at a life of comfort, Marie-Catherine marries Bluebeard — in spite of rumors that he has made a hobby of murdering his wives.
01 Feb Bluebeard (2009)
Bresson’s Beast It is a sad thing to see the tragedy unfold, that tragedy of growing weariness of life we have impressed on the story of the lost innocence of a girl. There are three such stories here. The least interesting is the ‘fairy tale’...
A Real Young Girl (1976)
A surreal voyage into adolescent sexuality.
Filmmaker(s): Catherine Breillat
Bored and restless, Alice spends much of her time lusting after Jim, a local sawmill worker. When not lusting after him, Alice fills the hours with such pursuits as writing her name on a mirror with vaginal secretions and wandering the fields with her underwear around her ankles. And, in true teenaged tradition, she spends a lot of time writing in her diary.
24 Dec A Real Young Girl (1976)
Another Alice Although blunt and clumsy, this film transports one — especially a male — to a place never visited. That’s in part because of the unflinching honesty of the narrative stance; never wavering from the girl’s perspective. It it were more familiar territory, like...
36 Fillette (1988)
Filmmaker(s): Catherine Breillat
Lili, a pouty and voluptuous 14-year-old, is caravan camping with her family in Biarritz. She's self-aware and holds her own in a café conversation with a concert pianist she meets, but she has a wild streak and she's testing her powers over men, finding that she doesn't always control her moods or actions, and she's impatient with being a virgin. She sets off with her brother to a disco, latching onto an aging playboy who is himself hot and cold to her. She is ambivalent about losing her virginity that night, willing the next, and determined by the third.
06 Dec 36 Fillette (1988)
Evenings of Cabiria In the late seventies, actress/writer Breillat made a film (“Young Girl”) about the nearly suicidal angst of female sexual discovery/fantasy. It is worth watching for the raw honesty, but it misses being a whole film. Five years later, she wrote a Fellini...
Anatomy of Hell (2004)
Filmmaker(s): Catherine Breillat
A man rescues a woman from a suicide attempt in a gay nightclub. Walking the streets together, she propositions him: She'll pay him to visit her at her isolated house for four consecutive nights. There he will silently watch her. He's reluctant, but agrees. As the four nights progress, they become more intimate with each other, and a mutual fascination/revulsion develops. By the end of the four-day "contract", these two total strangers will have had a profound impact on each other.
25 Nov Anatomy of Hell (2004)
The Grace of Stupidity, the Beauty of Blood Some of us are more nimble than others at being and some of us hide it well, but it is the human condition to be stupid. We all are and that’s that. The best we can hope...
Fat Girl (2001)
Filmmaker(s): Catherine Breillat
Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.
