Cinema of Catherine Breillat

Sophie Bélot, Ph.D. (2002), University of Sheffield, is a programme director at the same university. She has published on representations of women in Francophone cinema as well as on film forms (documentary, essay film, adaptations). She is currently working on emotion in cinema.

"This is a sharp, engaging volume, offering a complex feminist introduction to the films of this uncompromising cineaste."- G. A. Foster, Choice, 55.6, February 2018. "Sophie Be´lot’s book is to be welcomed as another passionate engagement with Breillat, more in line with some of the best, partisan, French work, by Claire Clouzot and others. These French studies come in close to the director’s auteur persona, responding to and defending Breillat’s seductive, yet contestatory, ethos and visual style. [...] a lovely book that presents a vivid, engaged apprehension of its subject."- Emma Wilson, French Studies, 73.1, January 2019.

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroduction : Catherine Breillat’s ‘Scenes-in-Time’The Personal as the IntimateThe Intimate: ‘X’ for CensorshipThe Manuscript’s Structure and Synopsis1 ‘Le Cinema de Catherine Breillat’An Intertextual and Transgressive Cinema: Sex is Comedy and Une Vieille MaîtresseThe Script of ‘Intimate Scenes’ in Sex is ComedyBreillat’s Original Film Adaptation : Une Vieille Maitresse2 Viewing (Dis)-pleasureThe ‘Cinematic Spectator’ in Tapage Nocturne3 The Teen Years in Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette, and A ma soeur!The Repressive French SocietyRevisiting the Lolita SyndromeReal ‘Becomings’/Young Girls4 A Male Adolescent Sexual Journey‘The Male Crisis’? in Brève traversée5 Adult Female Sexual DesireThe Genre Film: Crime Drama in Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour!Empowerment in Masochism: Romance and Anatomie de l’enferConclusionAdaptation of Fairy Tales: Reading and DreamingFairy Tales and Gender ExpectationsIntimacy in Catherine Breillat’s CinemaBibliographyFilmography