Sex Is Comedy

According to Catherine Breillat many people believe that by watching "making of" they can understand the intricacies of the actual shooting process. She opines that this is not quite the case and the real process of filming a feature film is unfortunately very complex,hard to follow and difficult to understand. She goes on to add that rather than simplifying the creative process these programs end up confusing the viewers. Keeping this particular idea in mind, she has filmed a unique,trend setting film which relies heavily on the whims and fancies of its principal characters. One can have a first hand experience of how difficult things are on a set when a film is being shot. Compared to other films by Catherine Breillat,sex is comedy is devoid of controversial elements. As a film director in this film Anne Parillaud looks a bit similar to Catherine Breillat.Gregoire Colin is fine too as the moody actor. As a final comment, I would like to remark that this film is very serene and an inattentive viewer might not know how quickly the film is getting over.

I had certain expectations when reading the title of this movie. No, I didn't think it would be a porn movie, but I hoped it would be a light-footed comedy about relations and sex. But big was my surprise when I actually saw it. It hasn't much to do with comedy or relationships. It's about Jeanne, a female film director who has a lot of troubles with her two main actors. They both hate each other, but are asked to play a difficult sex scene together. She has written and created the scene and knows exactly what she wants but she isn't able to make them do it right...

If you ask yourself why this movie has such a confusing title then, I'll explain to you what might have happened. Even though this is a French movie with French dialogs, the title is in English. However, I guess they have translated the title too literally. In French it would be something like: "Sex, c'est jouer la comédie", which could be translated as "Sex is faking it". That would make a lot more sense, because the actors have to pretend they like each other and that they like to have sex together while in reality they can't stand each other and don't want to do it.

The main problem that I had with this movie was that much didn't happen. It was all talking, talking and even more talking. I'm not saying that I wanted a big sex scene or a huge car chase, but this movie just seemed to drag on eternally, without offering something special. Normally I like European movies, but this one really didn't do it for me. Somehow I couldn't really care for the different characters, even though they didn't do a bad job. I give this movie a 6/10.

As being selected during the Quinzaine des réalisateurs, this year 2002, Catherine Breillat is masterfully halvedivided of her autobiographical film, there where her lead actress, Anne Parillaud (La Femme NIKITA, Luc Besson), embodies admirably the Film Director of "Intimate Scenes ".

This is a comedy of actors' manners. Making-Of ? Film genre ? Pornography or Exhibitionism? Sex Is Comedy is a post modern film, with its script based on a film within the film. As an implosive story of a minimalist love scene, the film is built with a constant solidarity of the forms and the spirit, in which, Breillat keeps on breaking and analyzing the taboos. Using visual codes and certain sense of the formula, Catherine Breillat implement her clinical analysis of the sexuality as an isolated problem outside the society to be communicate by the door of the heart.

Therefore, Grégoire Colin (Good Work, Nénette et Boni, Claire Denis, The Dreamlife of Angels, Eric Zonca) in the role of the Actor and Roxanne Mesquida (Fat girl, Catherine Breillat, Marie from the Bay of Angels, Manuel Prada), the Actress, are actors whom she invents, she does clarify in an interview. Breillat observes the man in front of him even, a chaste man. Then Breillat films the shame and the sexual mutilation, but also a big hope, a disturbing dimension of the ecstasy, a nudity of the feelings, the halving of the exhibitionism, playing to be one to be one. The Director is finally expected to lead the actors to give their feelings, their body and their soul. So arranged, facing the problem of the order of "who I am ", the actors of Breillat put on an inorganic vitality to merge in her work in progress. But, for what is a shape of incredible exorcism, for an actor, Breillat puts many questionings. Enduring at the same moment a big suffering, the actors appear to be the ones who look for this loving transport to be part of the eternity of their work.

The Art of Breillat is of researcher, to know how to undertake in a dialogue aiming at pushing away the limits of intimate scenes. Join make-up, prosthesis in erection and syndicates are not without reminding what pictures and scenes of Jan Steen's and Rembrandt could be in the anecdotal and the daily of characters on a shooting set. While the moral categories disappear from the background of Sex Is Comedy, Breillat succeeds in revealing the loving imitation power of the actors in a landscape of formidable and dramatic humanity.

All of us, and certainly most filmmakers are trapped in small worlds. But it must be hell to be trapped in one that society recognizes as such. Breillat makes sometimes sensitive movies, all from within this tight shell, all with the same screams.

But this one is different, a whole new tone. This time she follows a French model for films that are essays: she makes a film about a film that is an essay on sex. It works because such things are talk about movies and the portrayal of life in movies.

It works because we don't have to relate to the poor girl in question, instead the filmmaker who is struggling with the representation.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

It's particularly hard for a director to capture film-making without getting precious, inbred, over-dramatic, or all three. Breillat ably demonstrates the instinctive, lizard-brain methods of a female auteur in extracting from two "cattle" (as Hitchcock called actors) a love-scene of searing intimacy. Her main battle is with her leading man ("an actor is really a woman" she opines), although, naturally, it is the leading lady who will steal the show. I disagree that this is Breillat's first comedy. 'Romance' was at various points hilarious, but I accept that the French sense of humour can be elusive for foreigners; indeed, dozens of IMDb reviewers detected no comedy in Romance. By contrast, Sex Is Comedy raises plenty of laughs, mainly by using an actor's prop that goes back thousands of years to Plautus and the ancient Greeks. We wondered, leaving the theatre, whether Roxane's "beard" was a wig. A lovely performance from Anne Parillaud as Breillat wrestling with her own script, looking ten years younger than her age.