Sex Is Comedy (2002)

Movie director may be French filmmaker Catherine Breillat’s job title, but erotic controversialist is her vocation. Though a challenging and arousing presence in transatlantic cinema since the 1970s, Breillat’s first splash of Stateside sensationalism came with the hardcore penetration in her otherwise mainstream look at lust and longing gone astray in Romance (1999). Subsequent pictures, especially A ma soeur! (2001), further explored the awkwardness and exultation of human physical intimacy with deft humor, tough sensitivity, and full-frontal nudity. So no director in the world is better qualified than Catherine Breillat to lens a motion picture about a female director coaxing a male and female actor who detest one another to produce a credible, pubes-out rendition of passion-fueled, on-camera rutting, which is precisely what Catherine has applied her insight, humor, and dignity to in Sex Is Comedy (2002).