The basic theme is the dichotomy of womanhood. The woman cut in two. Every society creates laws to exercise power over women and exclude certain parts of the woman.
Breillat, Catherine.
It's not realism that I am interested, it was Reality — understood through symbols.
Breillat, Catherine.
I use my actors as a painter uses his colors.
Breillat, Catherine.
I'm interested in myth and transcendence — a different kind of knowledge, a different type of knowledge.
Breillat, Catherine.
To be able to reach the heights of purity you have to suffer through deprivation and humiliations. And what could have been a descent into hell becomes liberation.
Breillat, Catherine.
I like that Bluebeard isn't an ogre or a giant—he's a man. It's a story that teaches these little girls to love the man who's going to kill them.
Breillat, Catherine and Melissa Anderson (Interviewer). "Q & A with Bluebeard's Catherine Breillat: on Sisterly Love, Sadomasochism and Serial Killing." in: The Village Voice. March, 2, 2010.
As a very young girl, I was drawn to the image of the [murdered] wives hanging in the room—I love this image of the eternally fresh blood that was like a mirror under them. That, to me, is a vision of the eternity of women.
Breillat, Catherine and Melissa Anderson (Interviewer). "Q & A with Bluebeard's Catherine Breillat: on Sisterly Love, Sadomasochism and Serial Killing." in: The Village Voice. March, 2, 2010.
That said, I'm a very stubborn filmmaker, and I haven't given up hope. The only problem is that I'm getting older every day.
Breillat, Catherine and Melissa Anderson (Interviewer). "Q & A with Bluebeard's Catherine Breillat: on Sisterly Love, Sadomasochism and Serial Killing." in: The Village Voice. March, 2, 2010.
It always happens that I invent a lot right before I'm about to shoot.
Breillat, Catherine and Glenn Kenny (Interviewer)."Some Words About Bluebeard with Catherine Breillat." in: Mubi.com. October 31, 2009.
One of the reasons that I can do that is that I take a very personal approach to the art design. A lot of the things I bought for myself ahead of time because I like beautiful objects.
Breillat, Catherine and Glenn Kenny (Interviewer). "Some Words About Bluebeard with Catherine Breillat." in: Mubi.com. October 31, 2009.
In fact I find it quite amusing to work under such constraints. It's always very stimulating.
Breillat, Catherine and Glenn Kenny (Interviewer). "Some Words About Bluebeard with Catherine Breillat." in: Mubi.com. October 31, 2009.
That's why I wanted to do 'The Last Mistress.' I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because 'romantic' doesn't mean 'sugary.' It's dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can't attain.
Tsai, Martin. "Catherine Breillat Bares Her Romantic Side." in: The New York Sun June 20, 2008.
What makes you put your stamp or signature on a movie is your look," she said. "Can I put myself sufficiently in something that I am adapting so that I can legitimately sign on it and sign my look? I think 'The Last Mistress' is my film. It's undeniable. I recognize it. I don't need a DNA test.
Tsai, Martin. "Catherine Breillat Bares Her Romantic Side." in: The New York Sun June 20, 2008.
Sexuality reaches into something very beautiful. There's something very sublime. I think it's the duty of a filmmaker to show that this is not impure or ugly. Only artists can see that pornography is nonexistent; it's only a commercial invention of sex.
Tsai, Martin. "Catherine Breillat Bares Her Romantic Side." in: The New York Sun June 20, 2008.
When I was younger, I thought it was the solitude during the filming that made me feel that I was in a nunnery and everybody on the crew was having fun,I separated myself a lot because I felt I had to carry the film and couldn't mix myself with the sort of daily outside existence, and so I stayed within the film. The first time it made me suffer a lot. Now I demand it from everybody. I forbid any kind of playing around on my movie. Or if there is, I don't want to know about it. I don't want the slightest effects of it on the set.
Tsai, Martin. "Catherine Breillat Bares Her Romantic Side." in: The New York Sun June 20, 2008.
Everyone doubted that I was able to make such a film.But the battle was a good thing. The difficulties are what force you to manufacture illusions, which is what true filmmaking is all about.
Secher, Benjamin."'Catherine Breillat: All True Artists Are Hated" in: Telegraph.co.uk. April, 5, 2008.
If I stop making films, I will die. I can tell myself that one day I will stop living. But I cannot bear the fact that the day will come when I will no longer be making films.
Secher, Benjamin. "'Catherine Breillat: All True Artists Are Hated" in: Telegraph.co.uk. April, 5, 2008.
Passion is very, very sexual. And people find Vellini ugly because she's a woman who wants, who desires. A very modern woman. She's very free and extremely sensual.
Breillat Catherine. "The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat." in: Bright Lights Film Journal. November 2008. (English).
I always identified with Barbey D'Aurevilly, an author who is very much like me except in the 19th century.
Breillat Catherine. "The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat." in: Bright Lights Film Journal. November 2008. (English).
Writing is music. But to come back to color in painting, there's an autistic person in France who's able to calculate, in the course of a minute, incredibly complicated and lengthy calculations, faster than a computer. And when people say "How do you do it?" He says, "I see colors go by. Colors that are just flying by."
Breillat, Catherine. "The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat." in: Bright Lights Film Journal. November 2008. (English).
It's an image of cruelty and suffering, but also the beauty of man, the beauty of suffering, of the stoic suffering of a young man.
Breillat, Catherine. "The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat." in: Bright Lights Film Journal. November 2008. (English).
When I make a movie, nothing is limited.
Breillat, Catherine. "The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat." in: Bright Lights Film Journal. November 2008. (English).
In a way, I think the integrity of an artist is not to be liked and even to be hated, because then you move things, stir things up. I even wrote an article saying "The Importance of Being Hated." In a sense, if everyone loves you, it means you're not bringing anything new anymore.
Breillat, Catherine. "The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat." in: Bright Lights Film Journal. November 2008. (English).
I didn't do it on purpose, but while I was writing the screenplay, all of a sudden I found it was a book, so I published it as a novel.
Breillat, Catherine. "The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat." in: Bright Lights Film Journal. November 2008. (English).
I know why I make films -- partly because I want to describe female shame -- but beyond that, cinema is a mode of expression that allows you to express all the nuances of a thing while including its opposites. These are things that can't be quantified mentally; yet they can exist and be juxtaposed. That may seem very contradictory. Cinema allows you to film these contradictions.
Constable, Liz. "Unbecoming Sexual Desires for Women Becoming Sexual Subjects: Simone de Beauvoir (1949) and Catherine Breillat (1999)." in: MLN. 2004. Vol. 119, No. 4, 24 pages. (English).
It's not a club for homosexuals, it's a club where men come together, men who don't like the company of women, and there are many places on the planet where men don't like women. It's an allegory.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
We are constantly watching ourselves and aware of the fact that society is always watching us, but the difficulty lies in the attempt to see ourselves in a different way than we are envisaged by society. If you can't love yourself, you can't love anybody else.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
I had to make the film like a sacred painting. I had to paint my Caravaggio.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
The woman in this film represents a Christ.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
Reality and truth are not the same thing. Truth is more emblematic of the human condition, I think.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
When you see great silent films like Murnau's, you realise the primacy of the image in film; it is the image that is emblematic of what's actually going on.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
I think that artists have an imperative to show these images, because all the images of sex and bodies that we see are marred by perversion. There is just one point of view about sex, and it is pornographic. And I think that that is just the point of view of a very bad industry, and artists have the responsibility to represent sex from another point of view. This is what I have to address, and what I must do is show images that are not showable.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
Hell has an anatomy, and it is the woman's body.
Breillat, Catherine and Kevin Fox. "Hell's Angels: An Interview with Catherine Breillat on Anatomy of Hell." in: Senses of Cinema. November 2004. (English).
It's not just freedom to do a particular act. It's not consumerism. If you think of an orgy or falling in love, everyone would rather fall in love because it's really transcendental. The problem is that all governments and all religions have always been determined to make sex something dirty. Religion is afraid of the power of sex - because a person who can find the transfiguration of sex in her life is no longer a person who can be directed.
Breillat, Catherine and Libby Brooks. "The Friday Interview: The Joy of Sex." in: The Guardian. November 23, 2001. (English).
The problem is that censors create the concept of obscenity. By supposedly trying to protect us they form an absurd concept of what is obscene.
Breillat, Catherine and Libby Brooks. "The Friday Interview: The Joy of Sex." in: The Guardian. November 23, 2001. (English).
What we hear a lot of now is men asking women: 'What else do you want? You've got all the rights.' First of all, I don't have all the rights. If I consider myself as a woman, that is to say universally, I look at a lot of countries where I have no rights. The freedom of women is very fragile - it has only existed for 20 or 25 years.
Breillat, Catherine and Libby Brooks. "The Friday Interview: The Joy of Sex." in: The Guardian. November 23, 2001. (English).
You resign yourself to becoming an adult, but actually we have idealistic dreams. That's what I'd call being 15 and a half, but without the teenage misery.
Breillat, Catherine and Libby Brooks. "The Friday Interview: The Joy of Sex." in: The Guardian. November 23, 2001. (English).
Emotion makes a spectator think he sees something, but in fact he is tied to an emotion, and I am the marionettist!
Peranson, Mark. "Catherine Breillat Pulls the Strings: The Virgin Queen." in: The Village Voice October 2, 2001.
You are amazed when Roxane enters a room, but she is traumatized by her own beauty and is half-paralyzed by the mediocrity of the world.
Peranson, Mark. "Catherine Breillat Pulls the Strings: The Virgin Queen." in: The Village Voice October 2, 2001.
My movies are much more interesting than my life. But we don't know ourselves very well. The greatest thing is to love yourself. In life you are alone, and you can have some moments of exaltation, but the other person is only a symbolic object for your love. Society is a shell forcing ourselves to lie. I am proud that I don't lie to myself. And I think my movies are illustrations of that.
Peranson, Mark. "Catherine Breillat Pulls the Strings: The Virgin Queen." in: The Village Voice October 2, 2001.
This film is governed by symbols but reality is governed by symbols as well. The world is governed by symbols and some of these are in part really ugly, and if given consciousness can come back from our primeval memory. So the film is not about Reality. The film is basically about the impact of these symbols on us, how we understand them, how we understand our life.
Breillat, Catherine and Rhiannon Brown (Interviewer). "Romance." in: ABC Radio National, Arts Today section January 31, 2000.
I'm interested in myth and transcendence and this cannot be compared with daily Reality. It's not about Realism. It's a different type of knowledge, a different type of perception.
Breillat, Catherine and Rhiannon Brown (Interviewer). "Romance." in: ABC Radio National, Arts Today section January 31, 2000.
I had no intention of creating a new space for the cinema. I made the film trying to create the most basic impression. I made it for myself. I wanted to push limits beyond anything I had done before. The film was made for me.
Breillat, Catherine and Rhiannon Brown (Interviewer). "Romance." in: ABC Radio National, Arts Today section January 31, 2000.
What creates the concept of obscenity and of degradation is the moral code which determines what is obscene and it is very often censorship that brings about the concept of obscenity, whereas in fact the sexual act is an integral part of the quest for love.
Breillat, Catherine and Rhiannon Brown (Interviewer). "Romance." in: ABC Radio National, Arts Today section January 31, 2000.
Every society has created laws to exercise power over women and to exclude certain parts of the woman and they and use the excuse that it is to preserve the dignity of women.
Breillat, Catherine and Rhiannon Brown (Interviewer). "Romance." in: ABC Radio National, Arts Today section January 31, 2000.
And there's a terror on the part of some men towards this part of divinity which is Woman because if one is to look at men and women, women are closer to the concept of the divine.
Breillat, Catherine and Rhiannon Brown (Interviewer). "Romance." in: ABC Radio National, Arts Today section January 31, 2000.
I refuse to make a difference between men and women. But directors -- they are not interchangeable. I think that the director is a singular artist. That being said, I am profoundly a woman, and a man couldn't do this, ever. Had I been a man, I wouldn't have been able to do it.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
For me, romance is the illusion of love.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
Love is the road of hell. We pass through things which we'll never know what they really are -- they have the appearance of one thing, but they are something else, effectively.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
I didn't want this young actress, who is very pure, I didn't want her accepting this role [if it was going to be] a vision of her own lack of self-consideration; she needed to have grace, and then it would become the contrary.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
You know, bad actors look easy in front of the camera -- it's more difficult for an actor to move well than to pose well. To move, it's more difficult -- to go through a door, to move through a space. Rocco is like a cat, he has a feline body. He is someone who is in absolute harmony with himself.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
It's difficult to tell people's impressions when they're leaving the movie because they are often very, very sad and inside themselves. Finally even those who hate it, when they leave, they simply leave the theater -- but the film doesn't separate from them. When they think about it again the second day, and the following day, the opinion is different.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
So I decided to film it and not to have any rehearsals, to at least catch what would happen. And evidently the magic catch happened the first time we did it. We were amazed; it is very beautiful. To say, "We did this, we did that ..." is one thing, but it's only when we see it that we believe it. And it's true, it is by far my favorite scene, this scene where there is a passage of power.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
It's a fact that men are afraid to stop being strong -- it's their misunderstanding that they believe they are stronger than women. I think that the women are stronger. There is a power shift in a physical relationship. This is the subject of the film in the pure sense -- that in the physical love, the man starts by being the predator and the strong one and ends up being the one who is possessed by the woman. The sexual power of the woman is stronger, and the woman's desires are more powerful than are the man's desires. This is absolutely true. And that the man loves to flee is a very beautiful proof of this. We talk about a loss of power, but it is a very beautiful love exchange.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
So that's it -- this is why cinema is so necessary. We cannot sum it up in words.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer)."Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
We're in a world where we feel guilty for our sex life, especially for a girl. Girls lose virginity, it is negative—the first time you have sex is the first social rape. Fat Girlis about summer love, which is almost nothing. But for summer love you can die.
Breillat, Catherine and Cynthia Joyce (Interviewer). "Tainted Love." in: Salon.com September 17, 1999.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)