The Cinema of Catherine Breillat
Series: - Contemporary Cinema, Volume: 7
In The Cinema of Catherine Breillat, Bélot offers a detailed analysis of Breillat’s past and recent films. Breillat is one of the most internationally renowned French women filmmakers whose notoriety is built on her explicit representation of women’s sexuality. Most of her films rely on a female protagonist’s personal and intimate search of her self, characterised by her sexual journey.
Facing censorship and controversy, Breillat’s films do not easily fit classification and place the viewer into an uncomfortable position. This study looks at Breillat as an independent cinema auteur entertaining a close relation with her films by exploring and positing women, from adolescence to adulthood, as sexual beings reflecting her films’ identity emanating from Breillat’s personal or intimate scenes.
Facing censorship and controversy, Breillat’s films do not easily fit classification and place the viewer into an uncomfortable position. This study looks at Breillat as an independent cinema auteur entertaining a close relation with her films by exploring and positing women, from adolescence to adulthood, as sexual beings reflecting her films’ identity emanating from Breillat’s personal or intimate scenes.
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Sophie Bélot, Ph.D. (2002), University of Sheffield, is a programme director at the same university. She has published on representations of women in Francophone cinema as well as on film forms (documentary, essay film, adaptations). She is currently working on emotion in cinema.
"This is a sharp, engaging volume, offering a complex feminist introduction to the films of this uncompromising cineaste." - G. A. Foster, Choice, 55.6, February 2018.
"Sophie Be´lot’s book is to be welcomed as another passionate engagement with Breillat, more in line with some of the best, partisan, French work, by Claire Clouzot and others. These French studies come in close to the director’s auteur persona, responding to and defending Breillat’s seductive, yet contestatory, ethos and visual style. [...] a lovely book that presents a vivid, engaged apprehension of its subject." - Emma Wilson, French Studies, 73.1, January 2019.
"Sophie Be´lot’s book is to be welcomed as another passionate engagement with Breillat, more in line with some of the best, partisan, French work, by Claire Clouzot and others. These French studies come in close to the director’s auteur persona, responding to and defending Breillat’s seductive, yet contestatory, ethos and visual style. [...] a lovely book that presents a vivid, engaged apprehension of its subject." - Emma Wilson, French Studies, 73.1, January 2019.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction : Catherine Breillat’s ‘Scenes-in-Time’
The Personal as the Intimate
The Intimate: ‘X’ for Censorship
The Manuscript’s Structure and Synopsis
1 ‘Le Cinema de Catherine Breillat’
An Intertextual and Transgressive Cinema: Sex is Comedy and Une Vieille Maîtresse
The Script of ‘Intimate Scenes’ in Sex is Comedy
Breillat’s Original Film Adaptation : Une Vieille Maitresse
2 Viewing (Dis)-pleasure
The ‘Cinematic Spectator’ in Tapage Nocturne
3 The Teen Years in Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette, and A ma soeur!
The Repressive French Society
Revisiting the Lolita Syndrome
Real ‘Becomings’/Young Girls
4 A Male Adolescent Sexual Journey
‘The Male Crisis’? in Brève traversée
5 Adult Female Sexual Desire
The Genre Film: Crime Drama in Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour!
Empowerment in Masochism: Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer
Conclusion
Adaptation of Fairy Tales: Reading and Dreaming
Fairy Tales and Gender Expectations
Intimacy in Catherine Breillat’s Cinema
Bibliography
Filmography
List of Illustrations
Introduction : Catherine Breillat’s ‘Scenes-in-Time’
The Personal as the Intimate
The Intimate: ‘X’ for Censorship
The Manuscript’s Structure and Synopsis
1 ‘Le Cinema de Catherine Breillat’
An Intertextual and Transgressive Cinema: Sex is Comedy and Une Vieille Maîtresse
The Script of ‘Intimate Scenes’ in Sex is Comedy
Breillat’s Original Film Adaptation : Une Vieille Maitresse
2 Viewing (Dis)-pleasure
The ‘Cinematic Spectator’ in Tapage Nocturne
3 The Teen Years in Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette, and A ma soeur!
The Repressive French Society
Revisiting the Lolita Syndrome
Real ‘Becomings’/Young Girls
4 A Male Adolescent Sexual Journey
‘The Male Crisis’? in Brève traversée
5 Adult Female Sexual Desire
The Genre Film: Crime Drama in Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour!
Empowerment in Masochism: Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer
Conclusion
Adaptation of Fairy Tales: Reading and Dreaming
Fairy Tales and Gender Expectations
Intimacy in Catherine Breillat’s Cinema
Bibliography
Filmography
This analysis of Breillat’s films will appeal to students and teachers working in European film and Gender studies. It can also attract cinemagoers wishing to develop their interest in a European filmmaker.