Catherine Breillat (review)

As the first English-language book on director Catherine Breillat, Douglas Keesey's study is an invaluable addition to the field of French cinema studies. He offers illuminating and original analyses of Breillat's first décalogue of films, and, turning to Une vieille maîtresse (2007), gestures towards future directions for her work (as rather more accessible, he suggests). Keesey's particular contribution is to explore Breillat within a wider filmmaking and artistic context. He researches and unpicks the many allusions and connections in Breillat's work to other films, novels, feminist theory, and the visual arts — Manet, Courbet, and Picasso in Anatomie de l'enfer (2003) (pp. 139, 143, 146), for example, or Jean Eustache and Cindy Sherman in À ma sœur! (2001) (pp. 58–59) — as well as the various influences on her — Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel (p. 4), for instance, or Elia Kazan (p. 37) and Marguerite Duras (p. 144). As this type of analysis has been largely absent from other studies of Breillat, Keesey's book provides an essential resource for Breillat scholars, as well as a thought-provoking and readable introduction to her work for students and the wider, interested public. Keesey makes a case for Breillat's lasting significance as a filmmaker, ending on an exploration of her impact for future directors, suggesting that films such as Marina de Van's Dans ma peau (2002) would have been less possible, or even imaginable, had Breillat not in some way blazed a trail first (p. 151). The relationship of Breillat's work to religion, particularly the perceived impact of her Catholic upbringing, is also a key facet of this text; but, although this is undoubtedly a factor in her work, its significance is perhaps overstated here — after all, sexual shame is not the unique preserve of those of us with a Catholic background. If anything is absent from Keesey's study, it is a consideration of the impact of Breillat's films on those who watch them, since her originality in this area — in the nature and extent of the demands made on her spectator — is a principal feature of her work. The volume is well produced, although the publisher's decision to make it available only in a costly hardback version, rather than in the less expensive paperbacks that used to be common in this series, seems somewhat at odds with their stated intention to reach beyond an academic audience. This should not, however, detract from the interest and usefulness of this volume for all those interested in contemporary French cinema and in Breillat in particular.