Catherine Breillat’s fascination with Rhett Butler might seem like a glitch in the matrix of French transgressive cinema. In a new collection of interviews, *I Only Believe in Myself*, the director of some of the most confrontational films of the last fifty years repeatedly invokes the classical Hollywood archetype played by Clark Gable. For an auteur whose work has been banned, censored, and celebrated for its unflinching look at human sexuality, the reference to a cinema governed by the restrictive Hays Code is a striking paradox.
Yet, this tension defines Breillat’s career. While she may harbor a secret affinity for the polished charm of *Gone with the Wind*, her artistic lineage is more directly traced to the "absolute violence" of the poet Comte de Lautréamont. Breillat operates under the conviction that beauty is not a comfort but something that "ought to be cruel and frightening." From her 1968 debut novel, *L’Homme facile*, published when she was just seventeen, to her latest film, *Last Summer* (2023), she has consistently sought to dismantle the boundaries between the private and the public, the erotic and the grotesque.
Breillat’s cinema refuses the safety of moral condemnation. In *Last Summer*, she depicts a lawyer’s affair with her teenage stepson with a clinical, non-judgmental eye that challenges the viewer’s desire for easy ethical resolution. This refusal to look away—whether from the vulnerability of an adolescent body or the visceral details of physical transgression—is her hallmark. As she notes in her interviews, she feels no shame in depicting "every kind of depravity," seeing it not as a provocation for its own sake, but as a necessary exploration of the human condition.
With reporting from 3 Quarks Daily.
Source · 3 Quarks Daily
