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Sale comme un ange (French version)
Location
Main screening room
Date
June 19th, 2023
Duration
100 min
Cycle
Catherine Breillat x 7

From film to film, Catherine Breillat has tirelessly explored the way sexuality slips into the interstices of existence. By giving in to their impulses and fantasies, Breillat's characters defy appearances, conformism and social norms. Refusing a stifling banality, they try to be alive at all costs, at the risk of losing themselves along the way and suffering. While the director has just presented her new film at the Cannes Film Festival, this cycle brings together seven of her major films, from 36 Fillette to Une vieille maîtresse, in order to delve into an unclassifiable work, which confronts supposed taboos as few have done, and moreover from a feminine angle.

Sale comme un ange
Directed by
Catherine Breillat
Language
French
Actors
Claude Brasseur, Lio, Nils Tavernier
Origins
France
Year
1991
Duration
100 min
Genre
Drama
Format
35 mm
Synopsis

Georges, a tough older cop, is trying to help and protect a criminal, Manoni, whom he has known since they were both young. He asks his young colleague and friend, Didier, who has just gotten married, to stay with Manoni's wife and son to keep an eye on them. Meanwhile, he starts an affair with Barbara, Didier's young and sexy wife.

Sale comme un ange
« Il fallait un certain culot chez celle qui fut la scénariste de Pialat (pour Police) et de Fellini (pour Et vogue le navire) pour peindre ainsi une femme un peu cruche séduite par le pire des machos. Mais il fallait plus que du culot pour focaliser ainsi l'essentiel, pour passer du temps elliptique du récit au temps dilaté de l'amour et de la baise, et pour prendre, comme elle le fait, les désirs de ses personnages pour la réalité absolue. »
Alain Charbonneau, 1992

Catherine Breillat

Catherine Breillat is a French director, screenwriter, and novelist. In 1972, she acted alongside her older sister, actress Marie-Hélène Breillat, in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. In the mid-1970s, during the wave of "X" and erotic cinema, a producer offered her the opportunity to direct a film based on her book Le soupirail. The film, A Real Young Girl, which contains pornographic scenes, was not released until 2000 as its original producer went bankrupt. After a second film, Night After Night, she paused her directing career to write screenplays for others, notably for Federico Fellini and Maurice Pialat. She returned to directing with 36 Fillette, also adapted from one of her novels, and Dirty Like an Angel. Already appreciated by critics, she finally gained public recognition with the success of Perfect Love in 1996, followed by Romance in 1999. In 2007, she directed The Last Mistress, which was selected for the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2023, she was once again selected with the film Last Summer.

Photo: Films We Like

Entretien

Nous avons eu la chance de rencontrer la cinéaste Catherine Breillat à l'occasion du cycle que nous lui consacrons. Une conversation sur son parcours de cinéaste et son travail de mise en scène, alors qu'elle vient juste de présenter son nouveau film au festival de Cannes.