Catherine Breillat

Catherine Breillat (Bressuire, July 13, 1948) is a French film director based in Paris, renowned for her documentary work based on issues of sexuality, gender issues and sorority competition, and also noted for her work as a novel author.

Catherine Breillat is controversial for the way she presents sexuality. In 1999 she worked with the porn actor Rocco Siffredi in the film titled Romance , considered one of the first films with real sex scenes that were destined for the commercial cinema circuit.

Her work has been associated with the cinema of the body genre. In an interview with Senses of Cinema , he described David Cronenberg as another filmmaker who considers him to have a similar approach to sexuality in film.

Biography

Breillat was born in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, but grew up in Niort. She decided to become a writer-director at the age of twelve after seeing Ingmar Bergman's Night of the Circus, believing she had found her 'body' fictional" in the character of Harriet Andersson.

He began his career in 1967 after studying acting at the "Studio d'Entraînement de l'Acteur" de Yves Furet in Paris together with her sister, the actress Marie-Hélène Breillat. In 1968 his novel L'Homme facile was published. The French government banned it for readers under 18 years of age. A film based on the novel was made shortly after the book's publication, but the producer went bankrupt and the distributor blocked any commercial release of the film for twenty years.

Although Breillat spends most of her time behind the camera, she has acted in a handful of films. 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 brain hemorrhage, which caused a stroke that paralyzed his left side. After five months of hospitalization and slow rehabilitation, he gradually returned to work, producing Une vieille maîtresse (The Last Mistress). in 2007. This film was one of three French films officially selected for that year's Cannes Film Festival.

In 2007, Breillat met notorious con man Christophe Rocancourt, and offered him a leading role in a film he was planning to make, based on his own novel Bad Love, and starring Naomi Campbell. Soon after, she gave him money 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, she gave him loans of even larger amounts. In 2009, a book written by Breillat, in which he alleged that Rocancourt had taken advantage of his diminished mental capacity, as he was still recovering from his stroke. The book is titled Abus de faiblesse, a French legal term usually translated as "abuse of weakness". In 2012, Rocancourt was convicted of abuse of fact for taking the money. de Breillat and sentenced to prison.

In September 2010, the second film based on a Breillat fairy tale, La belle endormie (Sleeping Beauty), premiered at the 67th Venice Film Festival.

As of 2011, although Breillat had moved on to other projects, he still hoped to film Bad Love, but had not yet been able to find funding to do so. However, a film adaptation of his book Abus de faiblesse, directed by Breillat and starring Isabelle Huppert, began production in 2012 and screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

It has been noted that "Breillat remains committed to long takes, particularly during scenes of sexual negotiation, a technique that showcases the virtuosity of its performers and emphasizes the political and philosophical elements of sex".

Filmography

• 1976: Une vraie jeune fille
• 1979: Tapage nocturne
• 1988: 36 Fillette (Lolita' 90)
• 1991: Come on, eat an ange.
• 1995: À propos de Nice, la suite
• 1996: Parfait Amour!
• 1999: Romance
• 2000: Ma sœur!
• 2001: Brève traversée
• 2002: Sex is Comedy
• 2004: Anatomie de l'enfer (Anatomy of Hell)
• 2007: Une vieille maîtresse (An old lover)
• 2009: Barbe bleue / Bluebeard
• 2010: The belle endormie
• 2016: Abus de faiblesse

Awards and distinctions

Venice International Film Festival