![](\"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/SleepingBeauty.jpg\")
<\/a>In considering the history of film, it is often imagery of classic Hollywood that first comes to mind.\u00a0 Tales of romance, love, rebellion, mystery, suspense, and heroism have all withstood the test of time and continue to dominate the film industry.\u00a0 As these themes have carried forward into modern filmmaking, however, so have the traditional gender roles with which they are typically associated.\u00a0 The women of films by infamous auteur<\/i> Alfred Hitchcock, for example, often lose agency as the plot progresses, accepting their dutiful roles as passive wives, daughters, and mothers or suffering as a consequence of their sexuality and independence.\u00a0 By contrast, Hitchcock\u2019s men are expected to maintain their masculinity, as defined by their strength, power and control (Maestu 4-5), and are rewarded for so doing. While it is true that many great directors have diverged from the expected patriarchal framing of men and women in their films, it is arguable that none have done so with the poignancy and fearlessness of Catherine Breillat.\u00a0 With women as the dominant characters in each of her films, Breillat utilizes known gender dichotomies to deconstruct established patriarchal gender roles.\u00a0 Elaborate mise-en-scene, close-ups, narration, and the use of mirrors as a recurrent motif in The Sleeping Beauty<\/span> (2010), The Last Mistress<\/span> (2007), and Romance<\/span> (1999) allow the audience to connect with Breillat\u2019s female characters and aid in such deconstructions.\u00a0 Most importantly, however, her portrayals of women as their own independent purveyors of identity and desire allow for the depolarization of patriarchal definitions of femininity.<\/p>\nThough adapted by many different storytellers over time, the tale of Sleeping Beauty<\/span> has long been cast into the Disney archives with other perfectly performing princesses, patiently awaiting their princes; but Breillat\u2019s title character Anastasia (Carla Besna\u00efnou\/Julia Artamonov) is hardly a damsel in distress.\u00a0 As a spritely six-year-old, Anastasia proclaims \u201cI\u2019m a boy!\u00a0 I\u2019m a knight!\u201d and then, \u201cA little girl\u2019s life is boring\u201d, just before pricking her hand and falling into a dream-laden sleep wrought with the adventure she so desires. \u00a0Virginal and na\u00efve though she may yet be, Anastasia shares this rejection of femininity with her sexually experienced, equally outspoken counterpart Vellini (Asia Argento) in The Last Mistress<\/span>, who matter-of-factly informs fellow party-goers \u201cI hate everything feminine \u2013 except in young men\u201d.\u00a0 By verbalizing their rejection of gendered expectations Anastasia and Vellini are foreshadowing their later refusals to allow a patriarchy to define them within a feminine dichotomy, namely one which dissects female sexuality and acceptable social roles (wife, mother, etc.) into opposites which cannot coexist.<\/p>\n While Anastasia and Vellini are explicit in their verbal rejections of femininity, Marie (Caroline Ducey) in Romance<\/span> is explicit in her denial of gender role performance.\u00a0 As John Phillips explains, \u201cIn an obvious reversal of stereotypical gender positions, Marie \u2018hates guys who screw her\u2019, but is fixated on their cocks, which must be thick and hard \u2013 \u2018a thin cock\u2019s ignoble\u2019 she declares\u201d (135).\u00a0 Though she may act in a passive role during her sexual encounters, it is her choice to do so and the very fact that she seeks sexual encounters for fulfillment of her desires may be perceived as a rejection of femininity.<\/p>\n Conversely, refusal to maintain patriarchal<\/i> femininity may more accurately be thought of as an authentic performance of gender, instead allowing a woman\u2019s individual identity to define female roles.\u00a0 In the case of Romance<\/span>, Marie provides narration in the form of both internal monologue and conversational dialogue, giving the audience insight into her personal thoughts and feelings at every stage of her journey.\u00a0 For example, \u201cPaolo [Rocco Siffredi] dwarfs her, being tall, broad-muscled, and tanned, a veritable golden Adonis, a comparison reinforced in the golden-hued scenes in which he appears.\u00a0 However, here it is Marie who controls the relationship, saying what will happen, when, and where\u201d (Russell-Watts 79).\u00a0 Marie is in a passive physical position, but maintains the dominant role, which the audience understands from her own verbal demands and proclamations.\u00a0 Similarly, Anastasia narrates her own story, which, given the film\u2019s setting within Anastasia\u2019s dream-state, is the only possible form of narration.\u00a0 In this manner, \u201cthe princess imagines her individuation, and then moves consciously and methodically in the direction of her desire\u201d (Garcia 32).\u00a0 Anastasia has the unique privilege of escaping real world expectations (at least temporarily) and seeking her self-fulfillment in fantasy, subsequently giving the audience an insight into her development that would not otherwise be possible.<\/p>\n While narration is present and significant in The Last Mistress<\/span> as well, Breillat offers an unexpected twist by assigning the role of storyteller to the central male character, Ryno (Fu’ad A\u00eft Aattou).\u00a0 Though Breillat eliminates the benefit of insight into the female character\u2019s perspective, in her own words, she does succeed in informing the audience of \u201cRyno\u2019s compartmentalizing view,\u201d in which \u201cwomen are either wives or whores; mothers or mistresses.\u00a0 He can no more imagine sharing his desires with his sainted spouse than he could contemplate sanctifying sex with Vellini through marriage\u201d (Keesey 8).\u00a0 Here, Ryno\u2019s control over the commentary is representative of the patriarchal control over women that is maintained by society.\u00a0 Because an emotional tie to the female characters remains essential, however, other methods of connecting with both Vellini and Hermangarde (Ryno\u2019s \u201csainted spouse\u201d, played by Roxane Mesquida) are presented via close-ups of the women\u2019s faces in which their expressions provide keen insights into their emotions, and the use of mirrors, a favored Breillat motif, in which the audience is permitted to view the character as she sees herself.\u00a0 As Keesey further explains, \u201cAt the 2007 New York Film Festival, actress Roxane Mesquida spoke about the difficulty of conveying with her eyes and her body the internal conflict within a mostly silent and rigid character like Hermangarde\u201d (8).\u00a0 By contrast, extreme close-ups of Vellini\u2019s face during intercourse with Ryno are reflective of her sexual prowess and independence.\u00a0 Futher, the audience is privy to a view of Vellini in the mirror during a costume party early in the film, which offers both Vellini\u2019s view of herself as well as her view of the celebration behind her, her relation to which is merely that of an outsider.<\/p>\n Ultimately, however, failure to reconcile patriarchal dichotomies results in the failure of both women to achieve satisfaction in both their personal and social worlds; \u201cJust as Vellini and Ryno\u2019s marriage-less passion results in a dead child, so Hermangarde and Ryno\u2019s passionless marriage leads to a miscarriage.\u00a0 With the horrible matching deaths of these two offspring, one to the socially disapproved mistress and the other to the sensually deprived wife, Breillat points again to the necessity of reconciling opposites\u201d (Keesey 12).\u00a0 Further, neither is able to maintain a satisfying coupling with Ryno (or any man, for that matter), as Ryno remains married to Hermangarde but continues his sexual affair with Vellini.<\/p>\n In Romance<\/span>, Marie faces similar romantic frustrations.\u00a0 Seeking the sexual satisfaction that boyfriend Paul (Sagamore St\u00e9venin) denies her, Marie pursues physical relationships with Paolo (played by known porn actor Rocco Siffredi) and Robert (Fran\u00e7ois Berl\u00e9and).\u00a0 Of these three, however, Marie maintains a relationship with the only one who was able to offer her the sexual experience she sought, Robert, and is rewarded with the effective traversal of the patriarch\u2019s mother \u2013 whore dichotomy: \u201cIndeed, in Romance\u2019s<\/span> ending, Marie has transcended the domestic space entirely \u2013 on her own, with her child, dressed in black, and in a rugged environmental setting, she is finally freed from any discourse of virginity or whorishness (the white or red that have governed the color scheme thus far) and reveals the incompatibility of the distant Lady with the human mother: they simply cannot occupy the same reality, another fantastical space must be created\u201d (Coulthard 63).\u00a0 Here, then, the importance of Breillat\u2019s mise-en-scene becomes undeniably relevant.\u00a0 For the majority of the film, \u201cnot only does Marie wear white almost exclusively, but the stark white d\u00e9cor of the apartment she shares with Paul creates an atmosphere of arctic minimalism\u201d (Wells 5). \u00a0In select significant sexual encounters (her second, this time successful, attempt at bondage with Robert and the pairing with Paul which ultimately results in the conception of her child), Marie wears a striking shade of red, but by the last scene of the film, she is happily clothed in black, having rejected the virgin \u2013 whore dichotomy along with the white and red colors which represent it.<\/p>\n Unlike the modern realism of Romance<\/span>, The Sleeping Beauty<\/span> and The Last Mistress<\/span> present their audiences with backdrops of historical times and fantasy realms.\u00a0 Set in 1835, The Last Mistress<\/span> takes place in elaborately decorated drawing rooms, a seaside mansion which may very well be an actual castle, and the streets of upper-class Paris.\u00a0 Establishing a mise-en-scene which effectively polarizes the two female characters, Breillat films Hermangarde focusing on completing embroidery, reading from her Bible, and allowing her husband to kiss her only on the forehead, all while daintily dressed in high-collared gowns.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Vellini attends a costume party dressed as a devil, is seen forcefully licking a phallic-shaped ice cream cone, and \u201csmoking a cigarro<\/i> and wearing red skirts\u201d (Keesey 9).\u00a0 This constant reinforcement of their patriarchal constraints underscores the extreme efforts necessary to deconstruct the existing paradigm.<\/p>\n Offering a divergent perspective, The Sleeping Beauty<\/span> traverses the 100-year period in which Anastasia sleeps inside \u201cthe young protagonist\u2019s wonderland dream life, which ushers the six-year-old princess into modern-day adulthood\u201d (Yue 33).\u00a0 The mise-en-scene established by Anastasia\u2019s various costumes, along with the precise and distinct settings of each of her adventures, marks her passage from tomboy (she tears her requisite dress while outside playing), to adoptive younger sister (she wears her \u201colder brother\u2019s\u201d old clothes), to princess (the queen, played by Laurine David, in her dream world offers her a dress and fur-lined coat), and finally prisoner (with a gang of Roma bandits, Anastasia wears a simple pink dress and befriends a young Roma girl, played by Luna Charpentier).<\/p>\n As a sixteen-year-old, Anastasia wakes in a vintage, virginal white dress with a seemingly endless column of buttons from the nape of her neck to the small of her back.\u00a0 This confining dress remains her uniform until she succumbs to her sexual curiosities, first with her grown-up Roma friend (Rhizlaine El Cohen) and then with \u201colder brother\u201d Peter\u2019s (K\u00e9rian Mayan) great-grandson Johan (David Chausse).\u00a0 Having abandoned the virginal naivet\u00e9 of her younger self, Anastasia requests excitedly \u201ctake me into your world\u201d, only to be met with: \u201cImpossible. \u00a0It\u2019s not made for you,\u201d from Johan.\u00a0 Leaving both Johan and the white dress behind, Anastasia resurfaces in the last scene of the film, where she is barely recognizable in a modern black dress, stockings, bejeweled high heels, and hair that has been cut short.\u00a0 \u201cI went alone into your world\u201d, she tells Johan, in a succinct summation of her journeys.\u00a0 \u201cShe is the only one to know her adventures and, perhaps more importantly, the conscious reasoning behind her decision to begin a new life.\u00a0 Privy at first to Anastasia\u2019s robust dream life during which time she forms and pursues the object of her love, the film\u2019s enigmatic conclusion denies us access to her adult decision to leave Johan\u201d (Yue 34).\u00a0 In this manner, Anastasia is perhaps the most significant example of the Breillat woman\u2019s quest for individual identity.\u00a0 No one, possibly including Breillat herself, is fully aware of the self-realization that Anastasia has found in her solitary explorations.<\/p>\n Along with Anastasia, Marie and Vellini are both independent purveyors of identity and desire as well, each reaching beyond the patriarchy which would confound them as either evil or good, virgin or whore, passive or dominant, free or confined and allowing them to instead exist as simultaneously both or neither.\u00a0 Ironically, Breillat\u2019s style is strongly reminiscent of another, perhaps better-known auteur, Stanley Kubrick.\u00a0 Particularly in A Clockwork Orange<\/span> (1971) and Eyes Wide Shut<\/span> (1999), like Breillat, Kubrick explores sexuality rather explicitly.\u00a0 Further, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut<\/span> and Breillat’s Romance<\/span> were both released the same year and both met similar criticisms for their controversial examinations of taboo topics.\u00a0 In terms of cinematic style, Kubrick and Breillat both utilize narration, a slow plot progression, and long takes.\u00a0 It is here, however, that the similarities end.\u00a0 In A Clockwork Orange<\/span>, women are sexual, but only as objects of male desire.\u00a0 While both Eyes Wide Shut<\/span> and Romance<\/span> view sexuality through the lens of individual human desire, it is clearly the male protagonist in Eyes Wide Shut<\/span> who is given the freedom of sexual exploration; for the female lead, mere fantasy must suffice.\u00a0 Dubbed the \u201cauteur of porn\u201d as a result of her own willingness to reject society\u2019s definitions of censorship and appropriateness, Catherine Breillat has been looked down upon by the film industry and from an artistic perspective (Price 4).\u00a0 However, in many ways, this merely reinforces the importance of her work, thus simultaneously reinforcing her status as an auteur and bringing her to the forefront of important social issues.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited:<\/p>\n Clockwork Orange, A.<\/span> Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Malcom McDowell. Warner Bros., 1971. DVD.<\/p>\n Coulthard, Lisa. \u201cDe-sublimating Desire: Courtly Love and Catherine Breillat\u201d. Journal for Cultural Research v. 14 no. 1<\/span>. (2010): 57-69. Academic Search Complete<\/span>.<\/p>\n Garcia, Maria. \u201cRewriting Fairy Tales, Revisiting Female Identity\u201d. Cineaste 36.3<\/span>. (2011): 32-35. Academic Search Complete<\/span>.<\/p>\n Eyes Wide Shut.<\/span> Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Warner Bros., 1999. DVD.<\/p>\n Keesey, Douglas. \u201cNeither a Wife nor a Whore: Deconstructing Feminine Icons in Catherine Breillat\u2019s Une veille maitresse<\/i>\u201d. Journal for Cultural Research v. 14 no. 1<\/span>. (2010): 5-14. Academic Search Complete<\/span>.<\/p>\n Last Mistress, The<\/span>. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Perf. Asia Argento, Fu’ad A\u00eft Aattou, and Roxane Mesquida. Flach Film, CB Films, and France 3 Cin\u00e9ma<\/span>. 2007. Amazon Instant Video<\/span>.<\/p>\n Maestu, Nico. \u201cUnit 3: Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Later Years.\u201d Powerpoint presentation for Film Studies 120. Santa Barbara City College. Summer 2013.<\/p>\n Phillips, John. \u201cCatherine Breillat\u2019s Romance<\/span>: Hard Core and the Female Gaze\u201d. Studies in French Cinema<\/span>. (2001): 133-140. Academic Search Complete.<\/span><\/p>\n Price, Brian. \u201cGreat Directors: Catherine Breillat.\u201d Senses of Cinema v23<\/span>. (2002): 1-9. Web. 16 July 2013.<\/p>\n Romance<\/span>. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Perf. Caroline Ducey<\/a>, Sagamore St\u00e9venin<\/a>, Fran\u00e7ois Berl\u00e9and<\/a>, and Rocco Siffredi<\/a>. Flach Film, CB Films, and arte France Cin\u00e9ma<\/span>. 1999. DVD<\/span>.<\/p>\n Russell-Watts, Lynsey. \u201cMarginalized Males? Men, Masculinity, and Catherine Breillat\u201d. Journal for Cultural Research v. 14 no. 1<\/span>. (2010): 71-79. Academic Search Complete. <\/span><\/p>\n Sleeping Beauty, The<\/span>. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Carla Besna\u00efnou<\/a>, Julia Artamonov<\/a>, Kerian Mayan<\/a>, and David Chausse<\/a>. Flach Film, CB Films, and arte France Cin\u00e9ma<\/span>. 2010. Amazon Instant Video<\/span>.<\/p>\n Wells, Gwendolyn. \u201cAccoutrements of Passion: Fashion, Irony, and Feminine P.O.V. in Catherine Breillat\u2019s Romance<\/i>\u201d.\u00a0 Journal of the Twentieth-Century\/Contemporary French Studies v.6 no.1<\/span>. (2002): 51-70. \u00a0Academic Search Complete<\/span>.<\/p>\n Yue, Genevieve. \u201cTwo Sleeping Beauties\u201d. Film Quarterly v. 65 no. 3<\/span>. (2012): 33-37. JSTOR<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paper by Mallarie Stevens.\u00a0 Viewed on DVD. In considering the history of film, it is often imagery of classic Hollywood that first comes to mind.\u00a0 Tales of romance, love, rebellion, mystery, suspense, and heroism have all withstood the test of time and continue to dominate the film industry.\u00a0 As these themes have carried forward into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2976,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,67,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-papers","category-dvd","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2976"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}