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Sex is Comedy (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:45
Fresh:32
Rotten:13
Average Rating:6.4/10
Theatrical Release:Oct 20, 2004 Limited
Synopsis: To call a French filmmaker a provocateur may seem redundant, but feminist auteur Catherine Breillat has managed to shock even her most liberated compatriots. The bad girl of Gallic cinema, Breillat... To call a French filmmaker a provocateur may seem redundant, but feminist auteur Catherine Breillat has managed to shock even her most liberated compatriots. The bad girl of Gallic cinema, Breillat has become known for her graphic and cynical takes on male-female sexual relationships and has faced accusations of onset cruelty. SEX IS COMEDY is the director's witty take on her own mythology. Anne Parillaud plays Jeanne, a thinly veiled stand-in for Breillat herself. Jeanne's new movie is a sex-drenched tale that culminates in a scene that was actually featured in Breillat's controversial FAT GIRL (2001). In the scene, a slick older seducer manages to convince a young, beautiful virgin to submit to his aggressive sexual advances. The director's challenge is to coax her difficult actors into baring their souls, and bodies, in this wrenching, nearly pornographic exchange. Parillaud's Jeanne is a complex character--sometimes nurturing and unsure, and at other times cold and insulting. Her relationship with her gorgeous lead actor, played by Gregoire Colin, forms the emotional center of the film. Their seemingly endless debates about acting, sex, and relationships are combative, yet always flirtatious and sexually charged. Though this comedic take on filmmaking is the director's lightest movie yet, it still tackles larger issues of power, sexuality, and performance in an intellectual, and brutally honest way. [More]
Starring: Anne Parillaud, Gregoire Colin, Roxane Mesquida
Starring: Anne Parillaud, Gregoire Colin, Roxane Mesquida
Director: Catherine Breillat
Director: Catherine Breillat
Screenwriter: Catherine Breillat
Producer: Jean Francois Lepetit
Studio: IFC Films
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Reviews for Sex is Comedy
Takes an absurdist approach to a sophomoric subject and wrings real laughs from it; a terrific comedy about lust, filmmaking, and the human psyche at its most clandestine.
[H]olds multiple mirrors up to itself, creating a neverending series of reflections and self-referents...
Sex Is Comedy is a lively, frank and often perceptive anatomy of screen acting and directing: insightful, self-mocking and engagingly alive.
An eyes-rolling, forehead-smacking glimpse through the eyes of an artist in her farcical struggle
Reminds us what a vulnerable undertaking acting can be, and what an intimate, manipulative, caring and torturous act directing is.
If Breillat's aim is demystifying how passion and desire are simulated on-screen, then Sex Is Comedy is successful.
In Jeanne's world, and Breillat's, filmed sex is no ordinary eye candy. For their characters, it's an admission of a dark, complicated interior life that only the bravest of actors, finally, can expose on screen.
Sex Is Comedy is not sure what it's really about, or how to get there.
It feels too self-satisfied, but the prickly personalities and relationships have the ring of experience.
an off-putting egocentrism...permeates [Breillat's] otherwise intriguing discourse on the relationship between directors and actors
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| 19% 19% | Transformers: Revenge … |
| 55% 55% | Orphan |
| 43% 43% | The Proposal |
| 26% 26% | Land of the Lost |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 88% 88% | Ballast |
| 67% 67% | The Merry Gentleman |
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