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In the first part of our SKIN-depth Look at the career of French iconoclast Catherine Breillat, we discussed how she used explicit sex and nudity to reclaim the power in sexual dynamics for her female characters. Now as we look toward the back half of her career, we see a writer/directorwho mellows from the angry young artist intoa more subdued and playful director who continues pushing buttons, just in new and creative ways. She turned introspective in the early aughts before tackling some classic fairytale archetypes and finally coming to work with the biggest star she would direct in her career with her most recent film.

Sadly, we also watch as the industry more or less moves past Breillat, adapting many of her tactics without infusing them with the pathos she so carefully mined for years. Breillat also suffered a stroke in 2004, sending her on a long road to rehabilitation and an eventual return to filmmaking three years later. She would also have a run-in with a notorious con artist, falling victim to his charms, and losing a lot of her own money in the process. Basically, I'm preparing you for a rough road ahead.Though Breillat's best work is arguably behind her at this point, she has managed—against all odds—to make a return to her vocation older, wiser, and somehow more optimistic than she was in the first half of her career.

Brief Crossing (2001)

A scant 6 months after the release of À ma sœur!, Breillat was back in theaters with this tale of a brief but torrid affair that is built on deception and ends in heartbreak. A jaded and embittered British woman named Alice (Sarah Pratt) meets the naïve and optimisticteen Thomas (Gilles Guillain) on board a ferry, telling him that she has just left her husband. It isn't long before the teen starts falling for the older woman, and soon they are having sex and sharing intimacies about their life they haven't told anyone else.

Alice's sob story ropes Thomas in and gets him emotionally involved with Alice, even as she attempts to maintain a cool distance. Thomas tells Alice of his dreams of being a plastic surgeon so that he can craft beautiful women out of, well, less than beautiful women, while Alice more or less views Thomas as just another man that's going to love her and leave her. The film's ultimate twist comes at the very end of the film as the pair disembark and Thomas follows Alice from a distance, watching where she's going. He sees her get into a car where her husband and children were waiting for her, and Thomas realizes that he has been played in much the same way so many older men have played younger women on film for years.

Breillat has managed to craft a film with an even bleaker outlook on the world than previously seen, and she does it all without her characters saying a word. This is a filmmaker in full command of her craft, particularly in the film's sex scenes. While they are less overtly explicit than those in Breillat's previous two films, the centerpiece sex scene runs nearly six minutes, with both actors baring all, including Sarah Pratt showing off her foxy firecrotch...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

Like a good many Breillat females, she spends a substantial amount of time nude, baring all in the shower and later when she tries to get out of bed without waking Thomas...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

Sex is Comedy (2002)

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

Easily Breillat's most introspective work to date, this 2002 flick is an exploration of what goes in to shooting one of Breillat's notoriously explicit sex scenes, filtered only slightly through the lens of fiction. French actress Anne Parillaud plays a Breillat surrogate, a director who is having tremendous difficulty filming a sex scene for her upcoming film. The scene is identically structured to Elena's deflowering inÀ ma sœur!, right down to actress Roxane Mesquida returning to play the character.

Neither Mesquida nor her co-starGrégoire Colin are given names, referred to in the credits simply as "The Actress" and "The Actor" respectively. The film crew is played by many of Breillat's actual crew members, even further blurring the lines between truth and fiction, with all of these elements coming together and working almost despite themselves. That's the brilliance of Breillat as a director, her ability to go from literal masturbation to metaphorical masturbation without it seeming pandering on either front.

Filming of the centerpiece sex scene occupies most of the film's second half, with Mesquida getting right back into the slip she wore inÀ ma sœur!, with the only discernible difference between that sex scene and this one being the addition of lights to this one...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part IIA SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

The only question lingering in the mind of the viewer after the film is how much of the anguish we've seen Mesquida experience is real? I'm in the camp that she's just an undeniably talented and committed actress whose performance is so convincing that it can make the viewer question her own well-being. The sex is very clearly simulated, as the shots often pan out to show the crew around the bed, so there's no reason to assume that Breillat allowed anything untoward to happen to Mesquida during filming.

Still, your heart can't help but go out to this girl...

Anatomy of Hell (2003)

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

Following a glorified cameo in Breillat's Romance, adult star Rocco Siffredi reunites with the director for one of her most explicit and bleak films, 2003's Anatomy of Hell. A nameless suicidal woman (Amira Casar) attempts suicide in the bathroom of a gay bar where she is saved by a gay man (Siffredi). She repays him by blowing him in a park, though Breillat is careful not to show any insertion, shooting it not unlike Andy Warhol's experimental 1964 short "Blow Job" with the focus mostly staying on Siffredi's face. This clip comes to us courtesy of our sister site MrMan.com, and as you can see, it ends with a close-up on her face as remnants of his seed drip off her bottom lip...

The woman then offers to pay him to come to her house everyday for the next four days, ostensibly to make sure that she hasn't harmed herself, but more importantly, to bear witness to her sexual perversions.Based on Breillat's 2001 novel "Pornocratie," the film unfolds over the course of the next three nights as they run the gamut of perversions from the use of a garden hoe as a butt plug to her fixing him a tea made with her bloody tampons. Yeah, it's that kind of movie.

Casar admirably bares all and does all that her director asks of her, though she did use a body double for two shots of things being inserted into her various orifices, like lipstick...

She does, however, finger herself on screen—no body double required—as Breillat's camera slowly pans up her body (the GIF below is played at 2x speed, the pan up to her face in the film lasting a full thirty seconds)...

Perhaps the only thing that this film does successfully is show how far a filmmaker can go to prove a point without actually proving anything at all. The dialogue is mostly platitudes that clearly lose something in their translation from French to English, though the metaphors often come off as heavy-handed rather than poetic—i.e. the clunker of a line that is “Your words are inept reproaches!”. The man's homosexuality is almost an afterthought to Breillat, a way to further prove her ultimate point about all men, not just the cis-gender heterosexual types. It's her most muddled and bizarre film by a mile. But god bless Amira Casar and her astonishing body...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

The Last Mistress (2007)

As if to give a definitive answer to whether or not their relationship was damaged by Sex is Comedy, Roxane Mesquida returned to work with Breillat one last time with The Last Mistress. This was Breillat's first film since suffering a stroke in 2004 and she picked a sumptuous period film for the first time in her career.Based on Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's novel "Une vieille maîtresse," Mesquida plays the virginalHermangarde, a young woman recently engaged to aristocratRyno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou). Ryno decides to pay one final farewell visit to his Spanish mistressVellini (Asia Argento), buthis trip turns into a real fuck-cation.

This brazen act brings him under new scrutiny, particularly fromHermangarde's family, but he promises both her and her family that his decade-long love affair with Vellini is at an end. Right around this same time, though,Vellini determines that she is not ready to let Ryno go just yet, becoming dead set against his impending marriage, and settingout to either ruin him or everyone around him. Roxane Mesquida sports curly blonde locks for the film and shows some fantastic frontal in bed with Ryno near the end of the film—and yes, she shaved so as not to have a carpet not matching the curtains situation...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

Ryno just can't seem to get enough of that pesky Asia Argento, though, and who could blame him? Dario's daughter is insanely sexy and loves showing her naked body on film...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part IIA SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

In an interesting footnote to this film, Breillat and Argento got into a war of words over the MeToo Movement, with the director unleashing some harsh criticism on her former star in light of her accusations against Harvey Weinstein. This article does an excellent job of summarizing the battle, but it's one more example of Breillat going against the flow and continuing her rabble rousing ways.

The Sleeping Beauty (2010)

In 2009, Breillat made the first of two fairy tale adaptations from works byCharles Perrault, Bluebeard. Seemingly reinvigorated, she returnedthe following year with The Sleeping Beauty, a darker, more witch-focused version of the classic tale. In this version, the Princess Anastasia is cursed as a child by the evil witchCarabosse (Odile Mallet) to sleep for 100 years. Breillat takes us into the young girl's dreamspace, where she encounters various other witches, all seeking to break the evil curse.

Played as a sixteen-year-old by Julia Artamonov—making her screen debut at 19—Anastasia meets a band of gypsies while searching for her love Peter, eventually befriending a gypsy teen (Rosine Favey) with whom she has a(n off-screen) sapphic hookup, and we get a nice look at Julia Artamonov's breasts as she and Favey lay on the ground in post-coital bliss...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

Not long after, she is reunited with Peter, who properly pops her cherry, giving us a look at her ass after sex...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

Curiously, Breillat cuts away from the sex not once, but twice. This doesn't seem like the Breillat we all came to know and love, the one who would shoot the sex scene at the expense of the narrative, or the one who would turn sex into the narrative. Here, she is showing tremendous restraint by jumping to the aftermath and skipping the act of sex altogether. This trend would continue into her next film as well...

Abuse of Weakness (2013)

Never one to shy away from dramatizing events in her own life, Breillat's most introspective work is also, sadly, her most recent and likely final film. Breillat also landed the biggest star she'd ever worked with, Isabelle Huppert, to play the Breillat surrogate in this story based on her own book of the same name chroniclingherexperiences with a notorious con artist. While still recovering from her stroke, Breillat began a correspondence with con artist Christophe Rocancourt, in hopes that he would play the lead role in a film adaptation of her book Bad Love co-starring Naomi Campbell.

Becoming more and more fascinated with him and his life story, Breillat eventually offered him 25,000 Euros to write a screenplay based on his life. Over the next 18 months, Rocancourt managed to bilk Breillat for nearly 700,000 Euros, taking full "advantage of her diminished mental capacity" before disappearing from her life altogether. In 2009, Breillat detailed her account of the story in the book "Abus de faiblesse" or Abuse of Weakness, the eventual title of her 2013 film adaptation.

Never one to shy away from her own culpability in the story, Breillatpaints her protagonist Maud (Huppert) as a smart woman who is attempting to rationalize doing something she knows is wrong. The film opens with Maud suffering a stroke in much the same way Breillat suffered hers, before jumping forward in time to her recovery. We get a quick look at Huppert's breasts as she makes a mad dash to the phone to call for help...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Real Sex and Nudity of Catherine Breillat's Films Part II

While recovering, Maud sees a television interview with a charismatic con artist named Vilko—played by rapper-turned-actor Kool Shen—who brazenly flaunts the fact that he has conned people out of well over 100 million Euros, and Maud finds herself attracted to his shamelessness over his criminal activities. The events then unfold much as they did in Breillat's own life, culminating in her having to explain to her family how this could have happened—in what might be the single best piece of acting in Huppert's career.

Part of Vilko's scheme involves himhiding his family, including a wife played by Laurence Ursino, who does a sexy tease with a towel for the conman in their bedroom....

Another absolutely jaw-dropping moment played with brilliant pathos by Huppert involves her discovering Vilko's marriage and seeing him lavish his family with gifts—funded without their knowledge by Maud herself. It's heartbreaking and intense, and comes near the end of Breillat's least sex-filled film. In 2012, Rocancourt was found guilty of having displayed an abuse of weakness and was sentenced to sixteen months in prison and repayment of over 500,000 Euros to Breillat.

Whether or not Breillat resumes her film career is hard to say as it's not entirely up to her,as securing financing for a film in this day and age has become much more difficult. It's tough to say whether or not this de-sexing of her work would continue, but Breillat proved in an interview with Mubi earlier this year that she's still actively fighting for women's rights on film...

"A woman must have the same rights as a man, and I believe that talking about sexuality and having a sexual life as a woman is not synonymous with the diminishing of her qualities. I’ve seen how difficult it is for women to speak about sexuality the same way as men do. People blamed me for being a woman, and not for something else, when I talked about sexuality. At a very young age, I read beautiful writers who spoke about sex and sexuality—such violence, violence against women, a crudeness, but they were great writers. I wanted to have the same freedom in terms of political incorrectness, and to be able to talk about sex like a man, not like a woman who’s always asked to be reserved and do pretty things. Pretty is what I detest. Beauty comes through power, and power is often ugly."

Love her or hate her, you absolutely must admire this woman and what she has given to cinema. She has given us something we can't turn away from, something that may not make us feel good about ourselves or the world, but at least it contains enough truth and introspection to make us think. After all, isn't that what every filmmaker tries to do?

Check out the Other Directors in Our Ongoing "SKIN-depth Look”Series

Catherine Breillat: Part One

Blake Edwards

Spike Lee

John Landis

Ingmar Bergman

David Cronenberg: Part One

David Cronenberg: Part Two

François Truffaut

Bernardo Bertolucci

Roman Polanski

Mike Nichols

Louis Malle

Steven Soderbergh

Kathryn Bigelow

Oliver Stone

Nicolas Roeg

David Fincher

Francis Ford Coppola

Ken Russell: Part One

Ken Russell: Part Two

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Park Chan-wook

Robert Altman: Act I

Robert Altman: Act II

Adrian Lyne

Martin Scorsese

Jane Campion

Bob Fosse

Dario Argento

Wes Craven

Tobe Hooper

Todd Haynes

Danny Boyle

Stanley Kubrick

Paul Thomas Anderson

David Lynch

Brian De Palma

Paul Schrader

Paul Verhoeven

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Header image of Breillat via Mubi

All other non-nude images via IMDb