Agent provocateur

"Sex Is Comedy" offers us a window into the way Breillat works (or at least as much of a window as Breillant wants, or is able, to open). Her alter-ego here is Jeanne (Anne Parillaud), who is making a movie in which a young virgin (Roxane Mequida, who played the same character in "Fat Girl") is seduced by a loutishly seductive older boy (Grégoire Colin, who did not appear in the earlier film).

At the beginning of "Sex Is Comedy," Jeanne is shooting a scene in which the soon-to-be lovers are kissing on a beach: She berates the boy (he is known only as "the actor") for not kissing the girl ("the actress") properly or believably. She suspects, correctly, as it turns out, that the two of them are stalling, purposely messing up because they're nervous about the sex scene they're going to have to shoot soon. Jeanne reveals her doubts about her actors in a series of tail-chasing monologues, some of them delivered to her patient, simpatico assistant director, Léo (Ashley Wanninger), but many of them spun out into the air as if no one were listening at all. Jeanne just needs to get the words out there in order to crystallize her own ideas about what she wants, and needs, to capture in the film.

Jeanne's relationship with the actor is particularly fraught: He complains that the actress has ridiculed him and doesn't want to kiss him. He's not turned on by her, anyway, and would prefer to have nothing to do with her. He's sullen and sulky and doesn't seem to think being an actor is all that big a deal, stating that he'd much rather "have greasy hands, work with the soil." Jeanne doesn't hide her exasperation with him, confronting him daily with all the ways in which he's disappointing her (and then wringing her hands some more after-hours with her long-suffering assistant). She and the actor are often physically affectionate -- they frequently nestle up to one another in conspiratorial flirtatiousness. But emotionally, they're both like the hooked side of Vel-Cro: They just can't connect.

Breillat makes it clear from the beginning that, as difficult as the actor is, Jeanne demands so much from her performers that she sometimes comes close to breaking them. The comments she makes to, and about, them can be monstrous: "The way you look at her, it's awful." "They can't even kiss right." And, perhaps most harshly: "I'm always in control. They're my actors."

The point, of course, is that Jeanne can't control her actors -- she can't even be so arrogant as to shape their performances. But as director, it's her job to marshal every cast and crew member in the service of her overarching idea. Otherwise, why make a film at all?

Jeanne is a formidable presence on the set. One day she shows up with her foot, inexplicably, in a cast. When a well-meaning crew member asks if she broke it, she retorts, "I put my foot down. It broke itself."

She has decided that the actor should wear a prosthetic penis for the sex scene, both to make him more comfortable about his near-nudity and to protect him from the anxiety of having to get an erection. Once the actor has been fitted with his bogus boner (the technician who made it is named, appropriately, Willy), she marches up to him to assess the effect. She crouches close to him, as if to caress him. He stands there stiffly. His abrasive personality has temporarily dissipated: Suddenly, he's nothing but robe, slippers and cock, and in a matter of minutes, he and his faux erection will be called upon to perform.

Next Page: "Emotion is never dirty or obscene -- it's grace"

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