This morning I went to see Catherine Breillat's new film adaptation of The Sleeping Beauty, it was so much to take in at 9 in the morning, the subway hadn't even started running yet and I was already in the theatre, I felt like a real cinephile.
Breillat has such a gift for enchanting and the film is so wonderfully indulgent in parts and why shouldn't it be? It is afterall a story of a young girl's coming of age through a hundred years of imagination, fantasy and adventure. It's a shame there aren't more stills on the internet yet because these really don't do the film justice, so don't judge it by these pictures.
Other films I want to see, but these will have to wait until later.
Tetsuya Nakashim's Confessions.Warner Herzog's Caves of Forgotten Dreams.
I went to see The Last Mistress tonight at Cinematheque Ontario which is fast becoming my favourite place to watch a film. Anyways, the film is incredible, so elegant, it revolves around passion and inevitability and is complete with the most alluring cast imaginable. Asia Argento is amazing as La Vellini, watch her seduce, make out with her maid, suck the blood out of her lover's wound, cut his cheek with the knife in her hair and skillfully deliver bon mots such as 'Je déteste tout ce qui est féminin sauf chez les jeunes hommes/I hate anything feminine, except in young men, of course'. The whole thing is beautiful, and if nothing else watch it just to hear the sigh inducing French names: Ryno de Marigny, Hermangarde, Vicomte de Prony.
It's an image of cruelty and suffering, but also the beauty of man, the beauty of suffering, of the stoic suffering of a young man.
- Catherine Breillat.
Catherine Breillat is a brilliant director, I haven't seen that many of her films but the works I have seen has struck me as incredibly brave and masterful. On top of that, Breillat is always pissing people off with her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. This month Cinematheque Ontario is doing a retrospective on Breillat's works titled Anatomies of Desire. I'm most likely going to watch Bluebeard and The Last Mistress, which is playing this Thursday and August 9th respectively.
Bluebeard
Barbe bleue is a “brilliantly written, exquisitely realized feminist reworking of the cautionary mixed message in Charles Perrault’s fairy tale” (Amy Taubin, Artforum). Narrated by two young sisters huddled away in their attic to read the titular tale, the film unfolds from their imaginations like a stylized seventeenth-century pageant play reminiscent of Demy’s Peau d’âne and Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois. Naïve and courageous Marie-Christine (Lola Créton and her dancing big brown eyes) is the young, impoverished girl willing to wed the big, bearded brute (Dominique Thomas) in order to save her family from starvation and ruin. Breillat’s touch is in every detail, and her characteristic insights into the psychology of female desire, curiosity, fantasy and sibling rivalry—a curious parallel universe is created between the sisters reading the book and the fairytale sisters separated by marriage—are at the core of the film, yet Barbe Bleue is noticeably devoid of the explicit sex and sex talk that have come to define the director’s reputation. “I can't think of a better image to represent Breillat's cinema en toto than a shot of the massive, shirtless Bluebeard being watched unnoticed by his waif, virgin wife. Brilliant film” (Darren Hughes, Long Pauses).
Top three photos: The Last Mistress, last photo: Bluebeard.
Fat Girl is a poignant film by French director Catherine Breillat, it's a honest coming of age story dealing with a young girl's sexual exploration and about two sisters competing for beauty. It's filmed in incredibly creamy colours, orange popsicles, Normandy sands and celadon greens. The film is usually quiet, slow and hazy but it ends with a thoroughly disturbing scene which literally strikes you with an axe.
