| Catherine Breillat | |
| Birth Date: | 13 July 1948 |
| Birth Place: | Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, France |
| Occupation: | Film director, screenwriter, novelist |
Catherine Breillat (pronounced as /fr/; born 13 July 1948) is a French filmmaker, novelist and professor of auteur cinema at the European Graduate School.
Breillat was born in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, but grew up in Niort. She decided to become a writer and director at the age of twelve after watching Ingmar Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel, believing she had found her "fictional body" in Harriet Andersson's character, Anna.[1]
She started her career after studying acting at Yves Furet's "Studio d'Entraînement de l'Acteur" in Paris together with her sister, actress Marie-Hélène Breillat (born 2 June 1947) in 1967. Her novel, l'Homme facile (A Man for the Asking), was published when she was 17. The French government banned it for readers under 18. A film based on the novel was made shortly after the publication of the book, and received an R rating. The producer went bankrupt and the distributor Artedis blocked commercial release of the film for twenty years.[2]
Breillat is known for films focusing on sexuality,[3] intimacy, gender conflict, and sibling rivalry. Breillat has been the subject of controversy for her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. She cast the porn actor Rocco Siffredi in her films Romance (Romance X, 1999) and Anatomie de l'enfer (Anatomy of Hell, 2004). Her novels have been best-sellers.
Her work has been associated with the cinéma du corps/cinema of the body genre.[4] In an interview with Senses of Cinema, she described David Cronenberg as another filmmaker she considers to have a similar approach to sexuality in film.[5]
Though Breillat spends most of her time behind the camera, she has acted in a handful of movies. She made her film debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972) as Mouchette, a dressmaker, alongside her sister Marie-Hélène Breillat.
In 2004, Breillat suffered a intracerebral hemorrhage, causing a stroke that paralyzed her left side.[6] After five months of hospitalization and a slow rehabilitation, she gradually returned to work, producing Une vieille maîtresse (The Last Mistress) in 2007. This film was one of three French films officially selected for the Cannes Film Festival of that year.
In 2007, Breillat met notorious con man Christophe Rocancourt, and offered him a leading role in a movie that she was planning to make, based on her own novel Bad Love, and starring Naomi Campbell.[7] Soon after, she gave him €25,000 to write a screenplay titled La vie amoureuse de Christophe Rocancourt (The Love Life of Christophe Rocancourt), and over the next year and a half, gave him loans totalling an additional €678,000.[8] In 2009, a book written by Breillat was published, in which she alleged that Rocancourt had taken advantage of her diminished mental capacity, as she was still recovering from her stroke.[9] The book is titled Abus de faiblesse, a French legal term usually translated as "abuse of weakness".[10] In 2012, Rocancourt was convicted of abus de faiblesse for taking Breillat's money, and sentenced to prison.
In September 2010, Breillat's second fairy-tale based film, La belle endormie (Sleeping Beauty), opened in the Orizzonti sidebar in the 67th Venice Film Festival.[11]
, although Breillat had moved on to other projects, she still hoped to film Bad Love, but had not yet been able to find financing to do so.[12] However, a film adaptation of her book Abus de faiblesse, directed by Breillat and starring Isabelle Huppert, began production in 2012, and was screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.[13] [14]
It has been noted that "Breillat remains committed to the long take, particularly during scenes of sexual negotiation, a technique that showcases her performers' virtuosity as well as emphasizes the political and philosophical elements of sex. In both Fat Girl and Romance, for example, key sex scenes possess shots lasting over seven minutes."[15]
In 2018, Breillat made controversial remarks on Asia Argento, who starred in 2007's The Last Mistress, calling Argento a "traitor" for accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault.[16]
Through film, Breillat attempts to redefine the female narrative in cinema by showing female characters who undergo similar experiences as their male counterparts. Many of Breillat's films explore the transition between girlhood and adulthood. The females of her films attempt to escape their adolescence by seeking individuality.[17] There is an unsaid silence in society for girls to hide their sexuality and desires unless directly confronted about them. Breillat offers a platform to discuss female pleasure and sexual responsibility by exposing social and sexual conflicts in her films' themes.[18]
In August 2024 the actress Caroline Ducey, in an interview with the Nouvel Obs newsmagazine, accused Breillat of directing male actors to perform unsimulated sex acts upon her against her will during the filming of Romance.[19] The allegations were described in more detail in Ducey's memoir, La Prédation (nom féminin) [''"Predation: Feminine Noun"''].[20] According to Ducey, Breillat demanded that her coactor, François Berléand, with his fingers penetrate her on camera; Ducey and Berléand worked together successfully to simulate the scene without Breillat's knowledge. Ducey stated that actor Reza Habouhossein later orally penetrated her in a cunnilingus scene at Breillat's command, despite her plea to the director "not to force me to do things I didn't want to." Ducey at the time did not know what "cunnilingus" meant or that there were sexual practices like it.[21] In an earlier investigation by IndieWire Ducey had told the journalist that she was able to prevent the actor from penetrating her.[22] Breillat, on the other hand, speaking to the Indiewire journalist claims that she had planned the film to be shot with unsimmulated sex-scenes from the beginning and everyone who had read the extremely explicit script, including Ducey, knew what kind of film she was planning to make.[22]
Breillat denied the allegations, accusing Ducey of being "delusional" and announcing her intention to file suit against the actress for defamation.[23]
| Year | English title | Original title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1975 | Catherine & Co. | Catherine et Compagnie | Writer | |
| 1976 | A Real Young Girl | Une Vraie Jeune Fille | Based on Breillat's novel Le Soupirail. Banned after initial premiere, until 1999. | |
| 1979 | Nocturnal Uproar | Tapage nocturne | ||
| 1987 | Milan noir | Writer | ||
| 1988 | Virgin / Junior Size 36 | 36 Fillette | Based on her novel | |
| 1991 | Dirty Like an Angel | Sale comme un ange | ||
| 1993 | Couples et amants | Couples et amants | Co-writer | |
| 1996 | Perfect Love | Parfait amour! | ||
| 1999 | Romance | Romance X | ||
| 2001 | Fat Girl | À ma sœur! | ||
| 2001 | Brief Crossing | Brève traversée | ||
| 2002 | Sex Is Comedy | Sex Is Comedy | ||
| 2004 | Anatomy of Hell | Anatomie de l'enfer | Based on her novel Pornocratie | |
| 2007 | The Last Mistress | Une vieille maîtresse | Based on the novel by Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (1851). Entered into the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.[24] | |
| 2009 | Bluebeard | Barbe bleue | Based on the tale by Charles Perrault | |
| 2010 | Sleeping Beauty | La belle endormie | Based on Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault | |
| 2013 | Abuse of Weakness | Abus de faiblesse | Based on her book of the same title | |
| 2023 | Last Summer | L'Été dernier | Based on the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts |