Brief Crossing
French filmmaker Catherine Breillat achieved much notoriety with her last two films, "Fat Girl" (2001) and "Romance" (1998). Her technical assuredness and audacious exploration of female sexuality had a polarizing effect on filmgoers, not necessarily helping at the boxoffice but creating a buzz nonetheless. Her latest film, "Brief Crossing", made for French TV, has no U.S. distributor, but it's surprisingly accessible and could do well on the art house circuit. The tale of a sexual encounter between Alice (Sarah Pratt), a thirtysomething British woman, and Thomas (Gilles Guillain), a 16-year-old French boy, even has fleeting moments of romance, the last thing you would expect from the profoundly anti-romantic Breillat.
The film opens with Thomas racing to catch the ferry from France to Portsmouth, England, struggling with a large, inconvenient, old-fashioned suitcase. On the ship, the PA system lectures parents that their children "should not disturb the other passengers."
Thomas and Alice meet in the ship's cafe, with Alice staring frankly at Thomas eating. He finally meets her stare, fumbles with a cigarette, and they talk, first in English, Thomas haltingly, then in French, Alice proficiently.
Like Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise", Breillat's film is essentially a duet between two travelers, temporarily unmoored from convention. When Thomas drinks a beer, he tells Alice, "We're out at sea; we're beyond the law." Linklater's film, however, examines a relationship between equals. Breillat doesn't believe such a thing exists.
At first, the film is all artificial interiors, colored lights and hard, reflective surfaces. Alice gives advice on growing up: "The future just happens. What you really need is grace." After two brandies, she rails out at men, telling Thomas, "Only women get mutilated by life; they're far more generous," as they watch a magic show. (Breillat shoots the couple in the foreground, their profiles hovering on the outer edges of the screen, while the magician and his assistant perform out of focus at center.)
Breillat's amazing dialogue prattles out of Alice, like the pronouncements of the French Canadian academics in Denys Arcand's "The Decline of the American Empire." Alice knows what she's saying is preposterous, but she can't help herself: She hurts too much. Thomas falls in love with that hurt.
When they sleep together in Alice's cabin, the sex is filmed bluntly and unadornedly. Although you want the scene to be erotic, you know something's amiss. Alice feigns passiveness, but it's she who has the greater power.
Pratt uses her ice-blue eyes to great and chilling effect. There's a core of adult pain within them that's both mystifying and beautiful to Thomas. At times she appears plain, even homely, but then suddenly she's radiantly beautiful. Guillain amazes, his dark eyes first embarrassed, later becoming more confident, finally rimmed in pain, as Catherine gives him the only thing she has to give.
"Crossing" is the anti-"Summer of '42". With Breillat, there's always a cost to sex. "Crossing" acknowledges the attractions and temptations inherent in our movie notions of romance and then obliterates them in a devastating finale. In some ways, this is Breillat's most violent film -- and her most heartbreaking.
BRIEF CROSSING
ARTE France, GMT
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Catherine Breillat
Producers: Jean-Pierre Guerin, Pierre Chevalier, Mat Troi Day
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Frederique Belvaux
Editor: Pascale Chavance
Cast:
Alice: Sarah Pratt
Thomas: Gilles Guillain.
Running time -- 86 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The film opens with Thomas racing to catch the ferry from France to Portsmouth, England, struggling with a large, inconvenient, old-fashioned suitcase. On the ship, the PA system lectures parents that their children "should not disturb the other passengers."
Thomas and Alice meet in the ship's cafe, with Alice staring frankly at Thomas eating. He finally meets her stare, fumbles with a cigarette, and they talk, first in English, Thomas haltingly, then in French, Alice proficiently.
Like Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise", Breillat's film is essentially a duet between two travelers, temporarily unmoored from convention. When Thomas drinks a beer, he tells Alice, "We're out at sea; we're beyond the law." Linklater's film, however, examines a relationship between equals. Breillat doesn't believe such a thing exists.
At first, the film is all artificial interiors, colored lights and hard, reflective surfaces. Alice gives advice on growing up: "The future just happens. What you really need is grace." After two brandies, she rails out at men, telling Thomas, "Only women get mutilated by life; they're far more generous," as they watch a magic show. (Breillat shoots the couple in the foreground, their profiles hovering on the outer edges of the screen, while the magician and his assistant perform out of focus at center.)
Breillat's amazing dialogue prattles out of Alice, like the pronouncements of the French Canadian academics in Denys Arcand's "The Decline of the American Empire." Alice knows what she's saying is preposterous, but she can't help herself: She hurts too much. Thomas falls in love with that hurt.
When they sleep together in Alice's cabin, the sex is filmed bluntly and unadornedly. Although you want the scene to be erotic, you know something's amiss. Alice feigns passiveness, but it's she who has the greater power.
Pratt uses her ice-blue eyes to great and chilling effect. There's a core of adult pain within them that's both mystifying and beautiful to Thomas. At times she appears plain, even homely, but then suddenly she's radiantly beautiful. Guillain amazes, his dark eyes first embarrassed, later becoming more confident, finally rimmed in pain, as Catherine gives him the only thing she has to give.
"Crossing" is the anti-"Summer of '42". With Breillat, there's always a cost to sex. "Crossing" acknowledges the attractions and temptations inherent in our movie notions of romance and then obliterates them in a devastating finale. In some ways, this is Breillat's most violent film -- and her most heartbreaking.
BRIEF CROSSING
ARTE France, GMT
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Catherine Breillat
Producers: Jean-Pierre Guerin, Pierre Chevalier, Mat Troi Day
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Frederique Belvaux
Editor: Pascale Chavance
Cast:
Alice: Sarah Pratt
Thomas: Gilles Guillain.
Running time -- 86 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 5/16/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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