“Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Catherine Breillat” at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 29 June 2024 09:30

Written by Jack Angstreich

Fat Girl

From June 21st through the 27th, Film at Lincoln Center presented “Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Catherine Breillat,” a long overdue retrospective—programmed by Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan—of the cinematic oeuvre of that extraordinary director, in anticipation of the release on the 28th—at this same venue—of her latest opus, the marvelous Last Summer, which had its local premiere at last year’s New York Film Festival.

Already a published author as a teenager, she began as a novelist and sometime actress, appearing in a small role along with her sister in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris in 1972—that pathbreaking movie, in its radicalism and explicit sexuality, would seem to be an important precursor for her own distinctive practice as a filmmaker. She collaborated with Federico Fellini in some capacity as a screenwriter on his interesting late work from 1984, And the Ship Sails On, and has co-written scripts for Marco Bellocchio and Liliana Cavani. Also significantly, she was the source of the original story—and co-wrote the screenplay for—Maurice Pialat’s powerfulPolicefrom 1985–this was already several years after she had begun to direct features.

The earliest of these that I saw was also the first one I encountered, the striking36 Fillettefrom 1988. I didn’t see her impressive next movie, Dirty Like an Angel—from 1991—until somewhat later. I’ve never seenCouples et amantsfrom 1993, but it’s immediate successor, Perfect Love from 1996 further intrigued me and suggested her assurance as a filmmaker. The following Romance—from 1999—was an audacious endeavor with some beautiful sequences but I thought it ultimately artistically unsatisfying. I look forward to revisiting all of these.

With her next feature,Fat Girl (2001)she seemed clearly to have emerged as a major director, if she was not one already. Brief Crossing (2001) and Sex Is Comedy (2002) were both excellent and further extended her range. The invaluable critic J. Hoberman described Anatomy of Hell (2004) as her “most radical film.” (He added, “But in its stunning dialectic between tasteful and tasteless, Romance is surely her most insolent.”) The Last Mistress (2007), based on a novel by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, seemed to me to be possibly her greatest work to date, along withFat Girl.I was unconvinced by her adaptation of the Charles Perrault fairytale, Bluebeard (2009) and have not seen Sleeping Beauty (2010), also based on Perrault.

Abuse of Weaknessfrom 2013—which was screened at the New York Film Festival—if slighter than her very best films, demonstrated that she was still a force with which to be reckoned. Film at Lincoln Center’s summary reads as follows: 

In 2004, at the age of 56, Catherine Breillat suffered a serious stroke. Her left side was initially paralyzed, and after five months in the hospital she worked like a demon to walk again. Not long after, she prepared an adaptation of her novel Bad Love and decided to cast the notorious “swindler of the stars,” Christophe Rocancourt, fresh from a jail term for fraud. Over the next several months, Rocancourt took advantage of Breillat’s condition and stood by her side as she wrote him checks amounting to €650,000. She later took him to court and won her case, and chronicled the experience in a book that she then adapted into this uniquely haunting film, with a bold, tough performance by Isabelle Huppert as the Breillat stand-in and French/Portuguese rapper Kool Shen as the con man. 

Huppert is indeed dazzling and her realization of the role is a true tour de force, remaining one of the most compelling components of this pleasurable film.

Last Summer, a remake of a Danish movie from 2019, is another outstanding achievement, and it was on Cahiers du Cinéma’s list of the ten best films of 2023. It stars Léa Drucker and the luminous Samuel Kircher, a relative newcomer.

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