The Decade List: Une vieille maîtresse (2007)

Une vieille maîtresse [The Last Mistress] – dir. Catherine Breillat

The lack of bite in The Last Mistress (or, as it is more accurately translated, An Old Mistress) is not something I fault Catherine Breillat for, as it offers a shift in tone and voice from the filmmaker, working for the first time from source material outside of her own. Based on the novel by the Barbey d’Aurevilly, The Last Mistress focuses on a handsome young bachelor Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou) torn between the love of his young virginal wife (Roxane Mesquida) and aging Spanish mistress (Asia Argento).

In using a voice less confrontational than she’s known for when directing from her own material, Breillat composes the film like a painting, adorned with almost entirely flat, picturesque dimensions, infrequently interrupted by a close-up (usually of Aattou). In the visual blueprint of The Last Mistress, we’re reminded of what Breillat’s really about: meta dissections of crippling male/female relations. Only here, it’s dressed up like a sordid tale of corset-wearing, carriage-riding liaisons dangereuses. As Ryno’s Spanish mistress Vellini, Argento’s career obsession with playing women ripe with sexuality would have made her a perfect candidate for Breillat. Argento embodies a rawness that almost feels out-of-place. Her presence isn’t as mellifluous as Amira Casar in Anatomy of Hell or Mesquida and Anaïs Reboux in Fat Girl, and yet it’s in the roughness that Argento places on Vellini that distinguishes her from the otherwise sedated refine of the rest of the cast and ultimately gives The Last Mistress its haunting quality (Breillat told Argento to use Marlene Dietrich in von Sternberg’s The Devil Is a Woman as inspiration).

Breillat’s craft yields a mesmerizing effect on The Last Mistress. The film subsists somewhere on a different plane than the director’s other work, relying more on the perils the central romance than abrasive stylization to stick with the audience. On a larger scale, it doesn’t resonate as long as Fat Girl has; the latter still haunts me to this day. Yet, it’s still just as surprising of a work as anything else Breillat has made. Additionally, The Last Mistress has one of the best single lines of dialogue of the ‘00s, occurring between Argento and Amira Casar as an opera singer at a lavish dinner party: “I hate anything feminine… except in young men, of course.”

With: Fu'ad Aït Aattou, Asia Argento, Claude Sarraute, Roxane Mesquida, Yolande Moreau, Michael Lonsdale, Anne Parillaud, Amira Casar, Jean-Philippe Tesse, Sarah Pratt, Lio, Isabelle Renauld, Léa Seydoux, Nicholas Hawtrey, Caroline Ducey
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, based on the novel by Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly
Cinematography: Giorgos Arvanitis
Country of Origin: France/Italy
US Distributor: IFC Films

Premiere: 25 May 2007 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 7 October 2007 (New York Film Festival)

The Decade List: Sex Is Comedy (2002)

Sex Is Comedy – dir. Catherine Breillat

Though obviously inspired by her experience working on Fat Girl, Catherine Breillat does more than simply “defend” some of the more provocative elements of her work with Sex Is Comedy, her underappreciated ninth feature. To call Sex Is Comedy a “defense” for Fat Girl doesn’t work for two reasons. Firstly, Breillat would never feel the need to justify herself in such pedestrian terms. She’s too smart for that; check out any interview with her or read any of her books, and you’ll understand. Secondly, Sex Is Comedy doesn’t even address what I would argue to be the more controversial aspect of Fat Girl (the final act, namely). Instead, it centers on the “scènes intimes” a director named Jeanne, played by Anne Parillaud, tries to authentically depict in her own film despite the frustration of working with two actors who seem to hate one another.

Sex Is Comedy, above all else, is a film about the illusions of cinema, and a transformative one at that. The film within the film supplies a bevy of illusions, most of them intangible (like the way in which a freezing, overcast shoot on a Portuguese beach can mask as a romantic summer interlude through camera trickery), some of them corporeal (the director has a prosthetic cock molded to prevent the likely case of the actor being unable to achieve an erection, among other reasons). The fallacy of Jeanne’s highest concern is that of passion. She suspects the actors of undermining her and the film itself, a concern she vocalizes to Léo (Ashley Wanninger), her assistant director. Whether the actors’ mutual dislike of one another is in fact a manifestation of their anxiety about filming the sex scene or an actual clash of personality, Jeanne makes it her primary goal to elicit the illusion of intimacy from the two, played by Grégoire Colin and Roxane Mesquida, essentially playing herself acting out the scenes she portrayed in Fat Girl.

In keeping things especially meta, Sex Is Comedy employs its own set of illusions. For starters, the film Jeanne and company are making only resembles Fat Girl though both the use of Mesquida and certain script specifics (like Mesquida’s character’s virginity and the use of a prosthetic penis). In the film, Colin’s character takes Mesquida back to his place, while, in Fat Girl, she invites her lover (played there by Libero De Rienzo) to her parents’ vacation home while sharing a room with her sister. Parillaud’s character, while bearing quite a few similarities to the director, isn’t named Catherine. Like Anaïs Reboux’s character in Fat Girl, Parillaud actually looks quite a bit like Breillat but, instead of a rounder, pre-teen version of the director, resembles a “movie star” projection (have you noticed that all of the women in Breillat’s films tend to be brunettes?). Jeanne’s slight immobility, as a result of slamming her foot too hard against the ground (“a metaphor for the film,” she adds), is simply coincidental, as Breillat didn’t suffer the stroke that left her physically impaired until two years after Sex Is Comedy was made.

The setting of a film shoot also vaguely masks the fact that the way Jeanne speaks of her art is precisely the way not only Breillat does but all of her characters seem to in relation to their sexuality, among other things. It is, given Jeanne’s closeness to the director, a believable one, but the more interesting fallacies of Sex Is Comedy are ones Breillat directly alludes to within the film. In one scene, Colin’s character crudely plays around with his fake cock amongst the crew in a veiled act of charming them, while Jeanne and Mesquida’s character both recognize it as a way of precluding his own nervousness about the scene he’s about to film. But the film’s most telling moment occurs when the cinematographer (Bart Binnema) points out that Jeanne’s frustration with Colin directly mirrors the way she’s felt about all of her male actors in the past. In calling the director out in failing to recognize the sexual prejudices she seems to notice in everyone else, Breillat dispels the same myths about herself as she does the act of imitating passion for the greater good of art.

With: Anne Parillaud, Grégoire Colin, Roxane Mesquida, Ashley Wanninger, Dominique Colladant, Bart Binnema, Diane Scapa, Júlia Fragata
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat
Cinematography: Laurent Machuel
Country of Origin: France/Portugal
US Distributor: IFC Films

Premiere: May 2002 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 14 October 2004 (Austin Film Festival)

More Pansexual, Vaguely Sci-fi/Apocalyptic Teen Angst from Gregg Araki

I've concerned myself so much with the past ten years that I forgot 2010 is upon us, and I haven't even looked into which of my favorite filmmakers have stuff in the can... but browsing French distribution company Wild Bunch's website I uncovered that, lo and behold, after three years, Gregg Araki will have a new film out. Eric at Ioncinema listed Araki's Kaboom under his predictions for the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. Though Mysterious Skin made its world premiere at Sundance, it hit Sundance a few months later, so unless the film isn't totally ready, it'd surprising if Kaboom didn't show up there. College-age bisexuality and science-fiction elements suggest an extension of Nowhere, which as you know is fine by me, but Wild Bunch describes it as "Twin Peaks for the Coachella Generation" (I've never heard that description before). Thomas Dekker (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Heroes) will play the James Duval antihero, though Duval will also show up as "The Messiah," as he's credited on the IMDb. Kelly Lynch (overdue for a comeback), Roxane Mesquida (Fat Girl) and Juno Temple (daughter of Julien). Here's to my most anticipated film of '10!

The Decade List: À ma sœur! (2001)

À ma sœur! [Fat Girl] - dir. Catherine Breillat

My legacy with Fat Girl is a long, tumultuous one. I first saw it at the 2001 Saint Louis International Film Festival; I was alone, though I ran into a coworker who brought his girlfriend. I still haven't figured out why they were there, unless they'd seen Romance and hoped for another dose of explicit sexuality, but I did notice them dozing off at multiple points in the film. Well, I walked out of the film dazed and smitten, so much so that I brought an entire group of my high school friends along with me when the film made its theatrical run a couple of months later. They shared my enthusiasm for the film, but it wasn't until a few years later that the very mention of Fat Girl would create friction between the people I knew in a way no other film previously had.

My friend Dan was a member of Loyola Chicago's Cinema Club, and they had dedicated a month to female filmmakers. As a big admirer of the film, Dan suggested Fat Girl, and that suggestion didn't go over well. One girl in the club claimed the film was, quite simply, "a movie about a girl who likes getting raped." This spread, particularly among those individuals the girl was recruiting for her side of the argument (many of which hadn't even seen it). On a car ride to Chicago, Dan confessed that our mutual friend Mary had joined the side of this girl, which I found to be outrageous. Drunkenly, after seeing The Boredoms play a show, I brought this up to Mary, and thus began a strange feud in which I annoyingly attempted to defend the film at every given (er, inappropriate) moment, even after I was given strict instruction not to mention anything about Breillat, fat girls or rape. Years later, our friendship mended, but to this day I still get an "Oh, God" from those near the tussle when the subject is brought up.

I may have worn out my defense for Fat Girl during those years, as re-watching it kind of left me stunned yet again. While I think my claim that Fat Girl is as important of a film as Truffaut's The 400 Blows in regards to films about youth, I found myself without defense when that scene occurs. Not the scene the girl in the film club was so opposed to (which is unbelievably edited out of the UK DVD), but the one that proceeds it. Was that just a way to REALLY drive the message home? Though I applaud the fact that Breillat doesn't hold back her feelings, I, for once, didn't know what to say to my friend who found it cheap and callous. Breillat works similarly to Claire Denis in Trouble Every Day by building toward the scene with subtlety, although Breillat does create some unshakable tension with all the stunt driving that happens right before. I thought I'd be able to rationalize it before writing about it, but I guess not.

So "shocks" aside, Fat Girl is breathtaking. Its honesty and complexity in dealing with both the budding sexuality of teenage girls and their relationship with one another are unmatchable. Fat Girl stands as Breillat's finest example thusfar of seamlessly melding theory and story together, which had mixed results in Romance and which wasn't even attempted in Anatomy of Hell [Anatomie de l'enfer]. In many ways, Fat Girl changed cinema for me, and maybe I've exhausted myself in defending its honor (Breillat's most famous quote states, "all great artists are hated"). So forgive me for having nothing fresh or of value to say about one of the decade's most memorable, and best, films.

With: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinée Khanjian, Romain Goupil, Laura Betti
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat
Cinematography: Giorgos Arvanitis
Country of Origin: France/Italy
US Distributor: Cowboy Booking/Criterion/Janus Films

Premiere: 10 February 2001 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: September 2001 (Telluride Film Festival)

Awards: Manfred Salzgeber Award (Berlin International Film Festival); French Cineaste of the Year (Cannes Film Festival); Golden Hugo for Best Film (Chicago International Film Festival)