jinkylubolarsson I am a long time fan of Breillat. I can think of no other artist in the cinema who gets sexual truth on to the screen in anything like her league. I think that is why she is often criticised for being closer to pornography than art; there is graphic truth and artistic truth in her work and she fears neither. There are always characters who are young and feral in her work, and eros is never far from age and thanatos, in a Freudain sense. So often in her films have I identified with all those themes. Sex as a kind of blood-and-power sense of struggle is more often a masculine conception, such as in the work of Bataille, and typically women civilise this out of men in my experience. Breillat seems to understand the male side profoundly better than most men, and here is the strength of her work: she tells men about women from the viewpoint of her women, who can inhabit the skin of male desire in an extraordinary way, but not so as to civilise it.So here we have Catherine B. filming ugly exteriors and interiors with a masculine eye, unconcerned by brute spaces, bad lighting, garish interiors and a brief romanticism of dance and waves. We are not sure who is seducing whom. We can feel the boy's teenage heat. I remember. I now know women who believe they are in mid-life decay who might be tempted to be mistress, mother, big sister and school teacher all at once to a boy, if they could get away with it. Is someone lying, and must this always be? Catherine whacks us over the head with this , not for the first time, as she brings her film to a close. Life goes on and nothing's closed, just snapped and broken and shoots again will come. I'll remember the ending more than any other more predictable ending, but critically, I think that is because Catherine cheated me a bit, and created narrative lies. I don't mind though. I'll still go back to her when I need a harsh lesson about sex and love. Seduction as destruction and reconstruction, as nature's femininely mythologised spirit envelops and endures.The performances are fantastic, and again that must be testament to Breillat's talent, as she does these two actor pieces so well in her work.

Jon 80 minutes, and it felt twice that long! Brief Crossing is not brief enough. Indeed, the first 50 minutes or so consist almost entirely of a dialogue (more of a monologue, really) of a woman approaching middle age, tediously droning about "men," disappointment, sex, aging, and her recent breakup, to a French teenager she met in the ship's cafeteria.The tedious monologue continues as they go to duty-free shop, and to a bar, where finally her self-involved rant pushes him away. The "story" can't end there, of course, so she persuades him to listen to her drone on more as she brings him to her cabin.What little romance, sex, or for that matter, anything at all this film has besides bitter rantings is hardly enough to justify the price of a rental unless you are one of those who love dramas where nothing interesting happens at all. Yes, the ending is very nicely done, but it is scant reward to subject yourself to what amounts to a turning your living room into a virtual therapy session with a narcissistic whiner.Of course, some people like it. I could be wrong.

raymond-15 These two actors (Sarah Pratt & Gilles Guillain ) previously unknown to me are just brilliant. Occupying the screen for most of the time their film characters are revealed to us through a series of conversations. Casually meeting on an overnight ferry bound for Portsmouth, Thomas a teenager and Alice a married woman exchange shy glances at first as they sit at the same table in the ship's cafeteria.The feelings between the two grow more intimate as the night wears on. Alice finds Thomas so naive and innocent. He acknowledges he hasn't done so well at school but hopes to become a plastic surgeon because women are so concerned about their appearance and there's money in it. Alice is very critical about men in general claiming they are selfish and only have one thing in mind. She says she has just walked out on her husband.It is interesting to watch Thomas trying to look and act older and Alice (letting down her hair ) trying to look younger. Alice is in a seductive mood and uses her womanly experience to snare him into her cabin. Shutting out the world they are now free to act without any inhibitions.All scenes are beautifully handled by the director who is obviously devoted to detail. All scenes are believable. Alice always critical and somewhat cold seems to be constantly in control, while Thomas begins to be carried away by his emotions. To him Alice seems to be more desirable by the minute.Finally there is the disembarkation scene. You think you know how it will all end, do you? Well think again. Life is never simple. Life can have its disappointments.It was my intention to record this film for later viewing but I became so absorbed at the beginning I watched it right through. It is so pleasing to find a film that is so rewarding. Highly recommended.

frankgaipa Ever wonder what would have happened in on screen meetings between, say, Jean Gabin and Mae West, Shirley Temple and Toshiro Mifune, Mastroianni and Louise Brooks? Here, it could be said, the character played by the young Jean-Pierre Léaud in a variety of films meets an atypically voluptuous Mike Leigh female, a bilingual one, with better French, and English for that matter, than that of Grace Elliot in Rohmer's recent and wondrous "L'Anglaise..." A sadly trivial approach to a film whose complexities I love, but several months have elapsed. Details blur. I know the scene in the ship's bar, maybe with a dance floor, was special. An at least slightly appropriate touchpoint for "Brève traversée" might be the Lucie-in-the-park element of "La Femme de l'aviateur," a film I did re-watch and comment recently. My comment there, though, is aimed mostly at any who've already seen it. "Tadpole" would be more of a stretch, maybe an inappropriate one, though it works better here if you take just Neuwirth and forget Weaver.