Mubi's retrospective, Catherine Breillat, Auteur of Porn?, is showing April 4 - June 3, 2017 in Germany.Sex Is ComedyThroughout her career, Catherine Breillat has provided viewers with a long-form meta-cinema experience. While metacinema is as old as the medium itself, since her debut feature A Real Young Girl in 1976, Breillat has developed a distinct form of it: one that collapses ‘autobiographical’ material, various artistic sensibilities, and the process of filmmaking itself.Like dozens of other English words—such as ‘aesthetic’ or ‘abject’—the word ‘meta’ has been largely misused or misapplied with regard to the film and literary criticism. Regarding the consumption of fiction, the appropriate use of the term 'metafiction,' 'metafilm,' et cetera, has its basis in the Greek meta, which does not translate directly into English but can be understood as a preposition similar to the English word ‘about’ (‘having to do with,’ or ‘on the subject of’). Metafiction is therefore,...
- 4/24/2017
- MUBI
Towering castles where secrets lurk; fragile souls ripe for corruption; beasts made men, and men made beasts. These elements have populated our collective imaginations for centuries, across continents and generations. And for so many of these years, the stories remained the same. They served as warnings, cautionary tales against losing innocence and purity—morally-centered escapism. Only in the last fifty years, it seems, have we begun to deconstruct these stories. Some have watered them down for happier digestion; others amplify their sexuality and luridness. Few have been able to accomplish what Angela Carter did with her collection, The Bloody Chamber.
Focusing mainly on the tales of Charles Perrault, Carter began a trend that we have seen many times since—she brought classic stories into a modern context. A surface read shows obvious themes of feminism and sexuality. Traditional tales were meant to warn against sex (and sin, going hand in hand) and encourage wholesome unions,...
Focusing mainly on the tales of Charles Perrault, Carter began a trend that we have seen many times since—she brought classic stories into a modern context. A surface read shows obvious themes of feminism and sexuality. Traditional tales were meant to warn against sex (and sin, going hand in hand) and encourage wholesome unions,...
- 11/1/2016
- by Ben Larned
- DailyDead
This was a busy year at Tiff, where I was a juror for Fipresci, helping to award a prize for best premiere in the Discovery section. Not only did this mean that some other films had to take a back burner—sadly, I did not see Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge—but my writing time was a bit compromised as well. Better late than never? That is for you, Gentle Reader, to decide.Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany)So basic in the telling—a record of several days’ worth of visitors mostly to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienberg, Germany—Austerlitz is a film that in many ways exemplifies the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. What is the net effect for humanity when, faced with the drive to remember the unfathomable, we employ the grossly inadequate tools at our disposal?Austerlitz takes its name from W. G. Sebald’s final novel.
- 9/20/2016
- MUBI
Even at age 64, Catherine Breillat remains one of French cinema’s true enfants terribles. Her latest project, “Abus de faiblesse,” is an autobiographical film about her complex relationship with French conman Christophe Rocancourt. Isabelle Huppert stars as Maude, Breillat’s fictional alter ego in the film, and Indiewire was invited onto the set in Brussels before Christmas. Breillat’s last two works, “Bluebeard” and “Sleeping Beauty,” were jocular takes on well-know fairy tales by Charles Perrault. But “Abus de faiblesse,” her new project, is based on an autobiographical novel of the same name (which literally translates as “Abuse of Weakness”) and hits much closer to home. Though when looking for the villa where a large part of the upcoming film was shot, in a sleepy if leafy suburb south of Brussels, it doesn’t immediately feel like stepping into Breillat’s world: She’s...
- 1/15/2013
- by Boyd van Hoeij
- Indiewire
★★★☆☆
It's taken just over 18 months for Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard (2009) to make its way to DVD (courtesy of New Wave Films), following a limited UK cinematic release back in July 2010. Initial critical reception remained mixed, with many perplexed by Breillat's strangely restrained approach to Charles Perrault's classic French fairytale. As a feminist morality tale, the film works; yet as an adaptation of such a revered piece of Gothic fantasy, Bluebeard may leave fans of the source text some underwhelmed.
Read more »...
It's taken just over 18 months for Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard (2009) to make its way to DVD (courtesy of New Wave Films), following a limited UK cinematic release back in July 2010. Initial critical reception remained mixed, with many perplexed by Breillat's strangely restrained approach to Charles Perrault's classic French fairytale. As a feminist morality tale, the film works; yet as an adaptation of such a revered piece of Gothic fantasy, Bluebeard may leave fans of the source text some underwhelmed.
Read more »...
- 1/23/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
Red State; Bluebeard; 30 Minutes or Less; The Art of Getting By; The British Guide to Showing Off
There are few spectacles more unedifying than that of a director who knows they have made a lousy film blaming critics for their failure. When Kevin Smith's Cop Out was justifiably trashed by critics, the director had the gall to liken the reviews for his lame, lazy Bruce Willis vehicle to the playground bullying of a "retarded kid'" (his words, folks). Yet for proof that Smith knew that he had sold out, one need look no further than Red State (2011, Entertainment One, 18), a low-budget throwback to the indie-spirited glory days of Clerks that marks a sparky – if haphazard – return to form. Believe me, no one who could make a film as ballsy as Red State could be under any illusions about the dreadful balderdash of Cop Out.
Made for a reported $4m...
There are few spectacles more unedifying than that of a director who knows they have made a lousy film blaming critics for their failure. When Kevin Smith's Cop Out was justifiably trashed by critics, the director had the gall to liken the reviews for his lame, lazy Bruce Willis vehicle to the playground bullying of a "retarded kid'" (his words, folks). Yet for proof that Smith knew that he had sold out, one need look no further than Red State (2011, Entertainment One, 18), a low-budget throwback to the indie-spirited glory days of Clerks that marks a sparky – if haphazard – return to form. Believe me, no one who could make a film as ballsy as Red State could be under any illusions about the dreadful balderdash of Cop Out.
Made for a reported $4m...
- 1/23/2012
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
As Daniel Kothenschulte reminds us in the Berliner Zeitung, Georges Méliès was born 150 years ago today. "I doubt that the release of Hugo was timed to coincide with the occasion," writes Kristin Thompson. "Still, it's a happy coincidence." After all, "the subject of Méliès's pioneering special effects in the service of fantasy would be the perfect vehicle for Scorsese's first venture into 3D…. Naturally the events of history are messier than the neat scenario of a mainstream film could encapsulate. Still, given the constraints involved, Hugo's modifications of the facts seem quite reasonable, and on the whole the general public will exit the theatre with a decent impression of Méliès's career." For one thing, "Méliès was long dismissed as not being much of an editor, having supposedly just stopped his camera and started it again to allow for the substitution of different items of mise-en-scene. We now know, however,...
- 12/8/2011
- MUBI
Provocative French filmmaker Catherine Breillat made 2009’s Bluebeard one of her best films, but she doesn’t hit the same highs with her latest fairy-tale re-do, The Sleeping Beauty. By adding riffs on The Snow Queen and other folklore to the original story, she robs The Sleeping Beauty of the directness of Bluebeard, which contrasted a simple, naturalistic retelling of Charles Perrault’s original tale with a framing device that spoke to the cruelty of stories. The new film is much looser, starting with the familiar basics of Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty, then heading off on odd tangents that ...
- 7/7/2011
- avclub.com
Updated through 9/4.
"Following her typically idiosyncratic revision of Bluebeard, Gallic helmer Catherine Breillat fractures another fairy tale with The Sleeping Beauty," writes Leslie Felperin in Variety. "The story's ending may be happier this time around, but the overall result is less felicitous than its brisker, more focused predecessor. Actually something of a mashup between Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty and Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen — and featuring the erotic edges and anachronistic intellectual barbs expected of a Breillat pic — the film has provocative and compelling moments but feels too fragmented to match the helmer's best work."...
"Following her typically idiosyncratic revision of Bluebeard, Gallic helmer Catherine Breillat fractures another fairy tale with The Sleeping Beauty," writes Leslie Felperin in Variety. "The story's ending may be happier this time around, but the overall result is less felicitous than its brisker, more focused predecessor. Actually something of a mashup between Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty and Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen — and featuring the erotic edges and anachronistic intellectual barbs expected of a Breillat pic — the film has provocative and compelling moments but feels too fragmented to match the helmer's best work."...
- 9/4/2010
- MUBI
Catherine Breillat's latest, "Sleeping Beauty," and South Korean director Hong Sang-soo's "Oki's Movie" have been announced as the opening and closing films of the Venice Film Festival's Horizons section. The festival - which runs September 1-11, 2010 - dedicates the section to "cutting-edge" cinema. Both films will be having their world premieres. "Beauty," Breillat's second Charles Perrault adaptation after "Bluebeard," was quoted by Venice as saying that unlike "Bluebeard," she "would ...
- 7/19/2010
- Indiewire
I wasn't sure what the status was with Breillat's take on Sleeping Beauty, but I guess I was in the right frame of thinking - as she'll be premiering her second adaptation of a Charles Perrault fable (Bluebeard) on day two of the upcoming Venice Film Festival. In other news, Hong Sang-soo who just presented and won in Cannes for Hahaha, will present Oki's Movie (his 11th feature and first time in Venice) - about a young helmer, his old film teacher, and the beautiful Oki who is caught between them. Sleeping Beauty opens the revamped Horizons section, while the Sang-soo film closes it. Sleeping Beauty begins in a faraway castle the birth of a little princess named Anastasia. The old fairy Carabosse cut the umbilical cord while three young fairies emerge breathless. The fairy godmother has launched a curse: at the age of 16 years, the child will pierce the hand and die.
- 7/19/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Inception (12A)
(Christopher Nolan, 2010, Us) Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard. 148 mins
Nolan pushes the mega-budget cerebral action thriller to its limits here, and possibly beyond, with a multilayered onslaught that could leave you exhilarated, exhausted, or possibly in need of a new brain. The fiendishly complex plot imagines a world where corporate spies can raid your dreams to steal, or plant, ideas. Thus, DiCaprio assembles his team and orchestrates a risky psychic heist involving dreams within dreams within dreams; something like Ocean's Eleven meets Synecdoche, New York, multiplied by James Bond. Even if it follows the logic of the Hollywood blockbuster more than an actual dream, this boldly goes where no blockbuster has gone before. And there's nothing your brain can do to stop it.
Bluebeard (15)
(Catherine Breillat, 2009, Fra) Lola Créton, Daphné Baiwir, Dominique Thomas. 80 mins
Charles Perrault's wife-slaying fairytale has been rich territory...
(Christopher Nolan, 2010, Us) Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard. 148 mins
Nolan pushes the mega-budget cerebral action thriller to its limits here, and possibly beyond, with a multilayered onslaught that could leave you exhilarated, exhausted, or possibly in need of a new brain. The fiendishly complex plot imagines a world where corporate spies can raid your dreams to steal, or plant, ideas. Thus, DiCaprio assembles his team and orchestrates a risky psychic heist involving dreams within dreams within dreams; something like Ocean's Eleven meets Synecdoche, New York, multiplied by James Bond. Even if it follows the logic of the Hollywood blockbuster more than an actual dream, this boldly goes where no blockbuster has gone before. And there's nothing your brain can do to stop it.
Bluebeard (15)
(Catherine Breillat, 2009, Fra) Lola Créton, Daphné Baiwir, Dominique Thomas. 80 mins
Charles Perrault's wife-slaying fairytale has been rich territory...
- 7/16/2010
- by The guide
- The Guardian - Film News
Catherine Breillat's meditation on the Perrault folk-tale is elegant and erotic, but not especially resonant, writes Peter Bradshaw
Catherine Breillat's chamber-piece of oblique eroticism is beautifully designed and acted but rendered slightly unsatisfying by a pointless second level of narrative reality. The story of Bluebeard plays out in parallel with two present-day little girls reading the Charles Perrault story in a dusty old book, which they have found in an attic where they are not really supposed to play. Lola Créton is excellent as the impoverished Marie-Catherine, hardly into her teens, who is forced into marriage with the notorious nobleman Bluebeard, played with massive, glowering presence by Dominique Thomas. Her calm self-possession appears to entrance Bluebeard; she has "the innocence of a dove and the pride of an eagle". He agrees to her demand that they will not have sex yet, and to a very Freudian sleeping arrangement:...
Catherine Breillat's chamber-piece of oblique eroticism is beautifully designed and acted but rendered slightly unsatisfying by a pointless second level of narrative reality. The story of Bluebeard plays out in parallel with two present-day little girls reading the Charles Perrault story in a dusty old book, which they have found in an attic where they are not really supposed to play. Lola Créton is excellent as the impoverished Marie-Catherine, hardly into her teens, who is forced into marriage with the notorious nobleman Bluebeard, played with massive, glowering presence by Dominique Thomas. Her calm self-possession appears to entrance Bluebeard; she has "the innocence of a dove and the pride of an eagle". He agrees to her demand that they will not have sex yet, and to a very Freudian sleeping arrangement:...
- 7/16/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
She has a love-hate relationship with her home country and specialises in sex and scandal. What made the French director opt for a fairytale?
Catherine Breillat used to be the pariah of French cinema; she even wrote an essay called The Importance of Being Hated. Controversy seems to shadow every step of her film-making career: in 1999 Romance was the first mainstream film to show an erect penis; she gave Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi his 15 minutes of arthouse fame when she cast him in the lead role of Anatomy of Hell in 2004 (its 18-certificate activities included drinking menstrual blood and penetration with a rusty garden rake). These films left her with the nickname "the auteur of porn".
In truth, although these films were sexually explicit – exploring women's relationships with desire – they were meticulously unerotic. And in the last couple of years, outrage, ridicule, exasperation – all standard responses to a new...
Catherine Breillat used to be the pariah of French cinema; she even wrote an essay called The Importance of Being Hated. Controversy seems to shadow every step of her film-making career: in 1999 Romance was the first mainstream film to show an erect penis; she gave Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi his 15 minutes of arthouse fame when she cast him in the lead role of Anatomy of Hell in 2004 (its 18-certificate activities included drinking menstrual blood and penetration with a rusty garden rake). These films left her with the nickname "the auteur of porn".
In truth, although these films were sexually explicit – exploring women's relationships with desire – they were meticulously unerotic. And in the last couple of years, outrage, ridicule, exasperation – all standard responses to a new...
- 7/15/2010
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
Catherine Breillat’s films bring with them an unshakeable sense of dread, a ticking timebomb sensation that erupts in quiet devastation—hold the wide-scale destruction. The French button-pusher, operating with over 30 years of filmmaking experience, seems to relish in punishing a viewer’s comfort level. The most scathing example is her 2001 shocker Fat Girl, a meditative study of an insecure teenager’s grappling with sensuality that takes a hard, visceral left-turn in its final section. Breillat’s latest picture, Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue), doesn’t hit with as strong a late-game blow as Fat Girl, but it certainly earns intelligent discussion once the credits roll. Breillat, who also wrote the script, turns her lifelong fascination with Charles Perrault’s same-named fairy tale into a nightmare fable remix. While not as universally known as other entries into the 17th century author’s oeuvre, including “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty,” “Bluebeard” is coated in malice,...
- 4/9/2010
- ReelLoop.com
Given its mixture of sexuality, mystery, and abrupt violence, it isn’t surprising that Charles Perrault’s story “Bluebeard” held a childhood fascination for director Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl, Romance). Given how concerned Breillat’s movies are with investigating primal urges through a string of metaphoric scenarios, they could almost be seen as fairy tales themselves, albeit of a fairly dense and recondite sort. Breillat’s Bluebeard is effectively two interwoven stories: a relatively straightforward retelling of Perrault’s story, and a present-day thread in which two sisters (Marilou Lopes-Benites and Lola Giovannetti) read from Perrault’s book in an ...
- 3/25/2010
- avclub.com
Chicago – We’re back with week two of the 13th Annual EU Film Festival at the Siskel Film Center, one of the best film events of the year in the Windy City. If you missed part one of our coverage, and want to relive highlights of last week, check it out here. On to week two…
This year’s edition, running from March 5th to April 1st, includes high profile films from world renowned filmmakers like Peter Greenaway, Jacques Rivette, Neil Jordan, Catherine Breillat, Amos Gital, Bruno Dumont, Jan Hrebejk and Caroline Link. Moviegoers should take note of the fact that several of these titles won’t be screened outside of the EU festival in Chicago, making their appearance here all the more priceless.
The 13th Annual European Union Film Festival includes 59 feature films, all of which are making their Chicago premiere. If you’ve had your fill with Hollywood,...
This year’s edition, running from March 5th to April 1st, includes high profile films from world renowned filmmakers like Peter Greenaway, Jacques Rivette, Neil Jordan, Catherine Breillat, Amos Gital, Bruno Dumont, Jan Hrebejk and Caroline Link. Moviegoers should take note of the fact that several of these titles won’t be screened outside of the EU festival in Chicago, making their appearance here all the more priceless.
The 13th Annual European Union Film Festival includes 59 feature films, all of which are making their Chicago premiere. If you’ve had your fill with Hollywood,...
- 3/11/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
If the debilitating after-effects of a stroke weren't bad enough (she miraculously gave birth to not one (The Last Mistress) but two films when you add the Nyff selection Bluebeard) now comes word that the Bad Love (a project which she mentioned to us the last time she came to Nyff for a film), a remake of Breillat's own film, is Doa. - Thanks to Fin De Cinema's Joe Bowman for piecing together an update on provocatrice filmmaker Catherine Breillat. If the debilitating after-effects of a stroke weren't bad enough (she miraculously gave birth to not one (The Last Mistress) but two films when you add the Nyff selection Bluebeard) now comes word that the Bad Love (a project which she mentioned to us the last time she came to Nyff for a film), a remake of Breillat's own film, is Doa. It would have starred model Naomi Campbell,...
- 12/13/2009
- by Ioncinema.com Staff
- IONCINEMA.com
The old—make that ancient—Charles Perrault fairy tale of Bluebeard seems such a natural text for the ever-provocative French filmmaker Catherine Breillat to twist into knots that one wonders why the notion of making a film of it didn't occur to Breillat sooner. As Breillat reveals below, the project had in fact been kicking around for a few years, and Breillat's visually stunning, droll, and yes, sometimes horrific realization of the tale proved one of the most bracing highlights of 2009's New York Film Festival. (New York was pretty much its last stop on the festival circuit; Daniel Kasman weighed in, most eloquently, on the film from Berlin earlier this year, here.)
Breillat suffered a stroke in 2004, and went on after that to make one of her best-received films, 2007's The Last Mistress. When I interviewed her in connection with that film in Toronto that year, she was frail,...
Breillat suffered a stroke in 2004, and went on after that to make one of her best-received films, 2007's The Last Mistress. When I interviewed her in connection with that film in Toronto that year, she was frail,...
- 10/31/2009
- MUBI
The U.S. rights to Catherine Breillat’s “Bluebeard” have been acquired by Strand Releasing for a spring 2010 release. The film, which is set to screen this weekend at the New York Film Festival, is an interpretation of Charles Perrault’s classic fairy tale. It is described as the story of, “a young girl named Catherine who bravely confronts the aristocratic wife killer in a very carnal, intellectual retelling.” “Blubeard,” which debuted back …...
- 10/8/2009
- Indiewire
The Beast Stalker
Hong Kong, 2008, 110 minutes
Director: Dante Lam
If you've seen as many Hong Kong cop movies as I have, they do start to blur after a while. It's a genre that thrives for/despite not offering much variety, and Beast Stalker's kidnapping angle is no different.
The plot hinges on a ludicrously fateful traffic accident, and despite some mildly effective action here and there, it’s largely a failed attempt at a tearjerker by giving distinction to all the heroes, villains and victims through some overwrought emotional burden. The abundance of stylistic excess add nothing to the thrill, leaving it a forgettable cop thriller.
Details
Bluebeard
France, 2009, 78 minutes
Director: Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard is the controversial director's most conventional and least provocative effort, but that doesn't mean it's her most accessible, either. The lo-fi look and unconvincing Renaissance setting—indistinguishable from the look of the framing...
Hong Kong, 2008, 110 minutes
Director: Dante Lam
If you've seen as many Hong Kong cop movies as I have, they do start to blur after a while. It's a genre that thrives for/despite not offering much variety, and Beast Stalker's kidnapping angle is no different.
The plot hinges on a ludicrously fateful traffic accident, and despite some mildly effective action here and there, it’s largely a failed attempt at a tearjerker by giving distinction to all the heroes, villains and victims through some overwrought emotional burden. The abundance of stylistic excess add nothing to the thrill, leaving it a forgettable cop thriller.
Details
Bluebeard
France, 2009, 78 minutes
Director: Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard is the controversial director's most conventional and least provocative effort, but that doesn't mean it's her most accessible, either. The lo-fi look and unconvincing Renaissance setting—indistinguishable from the look of the framing...
- 4/24/2009
- by Arya Ponto
- JustPressPlay.net
One of the highlights of last year’s San Francisco International (and of the 2008 festival year period) was the opportunity to sit down with the incandescent Catherine Breillat to discuss her provocative opening night feature The Last Mistress. Though unfortunately not in attendance at this year’s festival, Breillat has sent on her new period piece Bluebeard (La Barbe Bleue) for its North American premiere in SFIFF52’s World Cinema sidebar, which Richard Avila accurately describes as her “playful, intoxicating and highly personal rumination on Charles Perrault’s 17th-century fairytale about a gloomy nobleman with a penchant for murdering his wives.”
As synopsized at the film’s website: “Fairy tales often have main characters who are sort of serial killers of children: in other words, ogres. But Bluebeard is its symbolic figure. In the 1950s, it was also the favorite tale of good little girls. One of whom is Catherine,...
As synopsized at the film’s website: “Fairy tales often have main characters who are sort of serial killers of children: in other words, ogres. But Bluebeard is its symbolic figure. In the 1950s, it was also the favorite tale of good little girls. One of whom is Catherine,...
- 4/8/2009
- by Michael Guillen
- Screen Anarchy
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