Sex Is Comedy

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.

Sex is Comedy (2002)

*** (out of 4)

French film from the controversial Catherine Breillat is more a companion piece to her masterpiece Fat Girl than a film on its own. In this film, a director (Anne Parillaud) is having trouble filming a sex scene because her actor (Gregoire Colin) and actress (Roxane Mesquida) can't stand one another. That's pretty much the entire story but the film is so much more than that because it really gives us a behind the scenes look at what goes on during filming such a scene. As with the director's next film Anatomy of Hell, this one here didn't get very good reviews but I was totally captivated by it. I'm not sure what it is but Breillat can make just about anything seem real and interesting. It's clear that this sex scene being shot is her personal experience from the filming of Fat Girl. The sex scene here is the same one from that film and the actress here is also the same one used in that film. The performances by the three leads are all very good but the movie belongs to Parillaud as the director being tortured by her actors. Parillaud really nails the role as the frustrated director willing to do anything to get the scene in the can. I think the film works best if you've seen Fat Girl because you can watch the filming here and know what eventually came from it. It's rather interesting watching this film and seeing what all went into making Fat Girl and more clearly, what it took to pull off the sex scene in question, which is one of the most haunting yet beautiful ones that I've seen. This film certainly isn't about sex and there's no comedy to be found but it is about a director trying to get both out of her actors.

"Sex is Comedy" is an open ended light drama about a film director, Parillaud (Nikita), working on a film toward the sex scene between her young male and female leads. There's no story in this film which simply shows how a director might work with her cast and crew while trying to squeeze, cajole, or otherwise evoke the nuances she desires from the a recalcitrant male lead and his reluctantly willing partner while wrangling cameras and crews and the foibles which beset a film director at work. This film conjures some insights into what being a film director involves and the hard work required of cast and crew while making a film and, I suppose, the techniques and methods of this film's director, Brelliat. There are similarities between the sex scene in this film and that in another Brelliat film, "Fat Girl", which is little more than noteworthy. "Sex is Comedy" doesn't walk on the edge of pornography as do other Brelliat films and will be of most interest to those interested in film direction Brelliat style. (B-)

This film was very interesting to me, virtually a film within a film, which is about a very whimsical director who cleverly persuades an actress and and actor (who happen to dislike each other) in producing sexual chemistry on film. The director is faced with a fusillade of obstacles as she tries to get the two individuals to perform beautifully on film. Sex is Comedy is much more than a comedy, packed with uncomfortable quirky moments the movie also addresses the psychological and innate instinctual behavior of men and women in regards to the sometimes controversial act of sex. I loved this film, the character Jeanne played by the beautiful Anne Parillaud performs wonderfully on screen as you share in her struggle to produce a motion picture work of art.

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.