To call a French filmmaker a provocateur may seem redundant, but feminist auteur Catherine Breillat has managed to shock even her most liberated compatriots. The bad girl of Gallic cinema, Breillat has become known for her graphic and cynical takes on male-female sexual relationships and has faced accusations of onset cruelty. SEX IS COMEDY is the director's witty take on her own mythology. Anne Parillaud plays Jeanne, a thinly veiled stand-in for Breillat herself. Jeanne's new movie is a sex-drenched tale that culminates in a scene that was actually featured in Breillat's controversial FAT GIRL (2001). In the scene, a slick older seducer manages to convince a young, beautiful virgin to submit to his aggressive sexual advances. The director's challenge is to coax her difficult actors into baring their souls, and bodies, in this wrenching, nearly pornographic exchange. Parillaud's Jeanne is a complex character--sometimes nurturing and unsure, and at other times cold and insulting. Her relationship with her gorgeous lead actor, played by Gregoire Colin, forms the emotional center of the film. Their seemingly endless debates about acting, sex, and relationships are combative, yet always flirtatious and sexually charged. Though this comedic take on filmmaking is the director's lightest movie yet, it still tackles larger issues of power, sexuality, and performance in an intellectual, and brutally honest way.
