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The Romance of Catherine Breillat Amanda D'Aoust A Thesis in The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Film Studies) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada December 2008 © Amanda D'Aoust, 2008 Library and Archives Bibliothgque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'6dition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votra reference ISBN: 978-0-494-63313-7 Our file Notre r6f4rence ISBN: 978-0-494-63313-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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I+I Canada iii ABSTRACT The Romance of Catherine Breillat Amanda D'Aoust This thesis explores how four films by Catherine Breillat, a controversial French filmmaker, express notions of Romanticism. It begins by outlining specific aspects of Romantic thinking that she engages with through film. Through the use of textual analysis, this thesis makes connections between Romantic thinking, her artistic vision (as it is expressed through interviews), and Une vraie jeune fille (1976), Romance (1999), Anatomie de I'enfer (2004), and Une vieille maitresse (2007). iv Dedicated to all of my male family members, friends and colleagues who aren't jerks. V Table of Contents Introduction Introducing Breillat 1 What is Romanticism? 2 Methodology 3 Themes in Breillat's Corpus I) Socialization, Looking, Mirrors 13 II) Search for Origins 22 III) Breillat and Realism 24 IV) Love and Meaning in Life 26 Literature Review 30 Corpus 34 Part One: Female Desire Chapter One Une vraie jeune fille: The Learning of Shame Synopsis and Contextual Information 37 Identity: Who is Alice? 40 Sensuous Animality 47 The Wilful Imagination as Resistance 49 Love as Fiction 51 Conclusion 54 Chapter Two Romance: The Unlearning of Shame Synopsis and Contextual Information 56 Paul as a Narcissist 60 Marie as a Romantic 62 vi Love and Binary Thinking 67 A = aand/ora^a 71 Conclusion 74 Part Two: Male Desire Chapter Three Anatomie de I'enfer: In the Realm of the Mythical Synopsis and Contextual Information 76 Female Body as Hell 79 Motifs 82 Conclusion 84 Chapter Four Une vieille maitresse: Conquest and Dissolution of the Male Narcissist Synopsis and Contextual Information 86 Recycling 90 Ryno as a Narcissist 91 Subjectivity 95 Vellini and Marigny as Equals 98 Nature 105 Conclusion 106 Conclusion 107 Endnotes 111 Works Cited 112 Filmography 116 Appendix 117 1 Introduction Moi, je suis incurablement romantique. -Catherine Breillat, Corps amoureux The word Romantic has not been one which usually comes to mind when deciding how to describe the films of Catherine Breillat. In the leading book on her work, Un cinema du rite et de la transgression, by David Vasse, the term "antiromantique" is applied half-consciously to characterize the nature of her art. Worse yet are the critics who label her as simply pornographic. Vasse's book and countless interviews with Breillat have come to fruition in order to refute these arguments which neglect to consider the rationale behind her stylistic choices. I disagree with Vasse's determination of Breillat's work as "antiromantique," although I believe his interpretation and misapplication of the word romantic is the root of this problem. This thesis will argue that Breillat's films are, indeed, very Romantic. Introducing Catherine Breillat Over the course of a career in film that spans just over thirty years in length, Breillat has earned the moniker, for better or for worse, of being the auteur of porn. Before becoming a filmmaker, she was a critically acclaimed novelist by the age of seventeen. She has been an actress in films directed by others (e.g., she plays the character of Mouchette in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris [1972]), a songwriter, and a lecturer at a number of post-secondary institutions in Europe (she has taught at la Femis, le Centre national de la cinematographic, and the European Graduate School). She is a prolific screenwriter. Her films are often adaptations of her own novels, and she has been the screenwriter for films by other well-known directors (e.g., David Hamilton's Bilitis [1977] and Maurice Pialat's Police [1985]). She is very vocal on the subject of her films, 2 which are interwoven with her views on the relationship between society and art. She is a regular guest on French radio shows. A major source of information for my thesis is a collection of five interviews with Breillat entitled Corps amoureux. Her style of filmmaking is controversial because she includes material that pushes the limits of censorship laws around the globe. Her films invert cinematic conventions such as the notion of the male gaze. These choices are inevitably linked to the political. Her films have been allowed exhibition by censorship boards because of her ability to intellectualize her inclusion of provocative material. Essentially, her argument is that it is the role of the artist to push the boundaries imposed by societal values. She is a vehement believer in the freedom of speech especially for the artist whose role it is to question the boundaries imposed by forces in power. Her popularity has significantly increased since the release of Romance in 1999. This popularity has also migrated into the scholarly world as academics have increasingly entered into the discussion of her work. Last year, there was a conference exclusively on the subject of Catherine Breillat in England at the University of Lancaster. What Is Romanticism? Unfortunately, Romantic (with a capital "R") is a difficult term to explain. One of the most established scholars on this subject, Isaiah Berlin, who wrote The Roots of Romanticism, spent an entire academic career trying to establish a definitive explanation of the term. In his introduction, he explains how this is an impossible task. Romanticism is inherently ambiguous and self-contradictory. That being said, one cannot help but say that something is Romantic: "On sent le romantique, on ne le definit pas" (Mercier qtd. in Gengembre 9). We can recognize its influence, its essence, in a work of art, in a doctrine, 3 or in a revolution of thought concerning how to live one's life or how to perceive the world. It is in this respect that I hope to use notions of Romanticism, essentially an intellectual-historical methodology, to discuss selected works from Breillat's filmic body. I will leave the debate of what exactly is Romantic to more established academics. Despite the inherent contradictions found within Romanticism, it is rare that any of these ways of understanding Romanticism have been or can be disqualified. Even contradictory interpretations are equally valid partially due to its ambiguous nature. Hegel, coming out of the Romantic tradition, wrote that even seemingly contradictory interpretations of reality are really bits of a larger, all-encompassing holistic conception of Truth. Breillat, along with other contemporary French filmmakers such as Bruno Dumont and Gaspar Noe, uses Romantic Irony, a belief that Truth can be better understood through the exposure of conflict between seemingly opposing ideas, in her aesthetic choices. Using this Romantic concept as a methodology to discuss her work is not too problematic because these films are not arguing what is Romantic. Instead Breillat's films express symptoms of agreed upon notions of Romanticism. Methodology I have decided to focus on Catherine Breillat because there is a contradiction between how she views her own films and the methodologies used by writers to synthesis the meaning and the authorial intent behind her work. This thesis is an exercise in the application of a discourse that resembles the sometimes confusing way Breillat describes her own views. There is no literature that explores the credibility of identifying herself as a Romantic, a claim that initially sparks inquiry and disbelief. She is a part of a larger 4 phenomenon that is occurring primarily in contemporary French cinema that is often identified as the Cinema of the Body or as the Cinema of Sensation. However, her preoccupation with love between the sexes alongside her breaking down of boundaries between man and animal, her anti-theoretical resistance, and the importance she ascribes to the role of the individual, coincides with many concepts found within Romantic thought.