by
MOVIE CATEGORY
Thomas and Alice meet on the overnight ferry from Le Havre to Portsmouth. He is under 18, she is over 30. Between awkwardness and small undertakings, they end up spending a night strangely torn between lust and romantic inspiration. In the non-place of a ship made up of canteens, pubs, supermarkets and anonymous bedrooms, the tv-movie Brief Crossing finds the perfect surface to observe a battle-of-the-sexes sample under the microscope, to realize its intractability. Alice’s experience fills the night with words, reflections, debates on male arrogance, and Thomas’s inexperience makes every image vibrate with the adolescent tremor of first experiences. Under Catherine Breillat’s microscope, there is always the risk that a ray of light will come to burn away the now-disillusioned hopes of love like with ants.
DIRECTORY
Director, screenwriter, novelist, and actress, she is one of the most original and courageous voices in contemporary French cinema. Originally from Breissuire, in the French province of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, she wrote her first novel in 1968, at the age of 17: L’homme facile. After several appearances in films such as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), and while collaborating, between screenplays and editing, with names such as Liliana Cavani, Federico Fellini, Marco Bellocchio and Maurice Pialat, she made her directorial debut with Une vrai jeune fille (1976), which adapted her fourth novel, Le soupirail. After Tapage nocturne (1979) and 36 fillette (1988), the director’s interest in the exploration of sexuality and the relationship between generations is more than clear. This is confirmed by her subsequent films, including Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2000), and Anatomy of Hell(2003), titles presented (and awarded) at festivals such as Rotterdam, Edinburgh, Berlin, and Cannes. Her films have featured important actresses such as Isabelle Huppert, Asia Argento, Yolande Moureau and Amira Casar. In 2012, director Luc Moullet dedicated a documentary to her, Catherine Breillat, la première fois. A multiple nominee for the Palme d’Or at Cannes (with The Last Mistress in 2007 and Last Summer in 2023), she presided over the Locarno jury in 2019.
