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Reviews
Sex Is Comedy (2002)
An interesting concept, but a little lost in itself.
Sex Is Comedy is a film based upon Breillat's personal experience in filming a sex scene. Trying to inspire a performance that meets her particular demands, Jeanne (Anna Parillaud), the director (based on Breillat) has to overcome the obstacles of her own perfectionism and the obvious animosity between her stubborn actor (Gregoire Colin) and actress (Roxane Mesquida). The Actor is more concerned with playing up to the crew members off camera than putting in a convincing performance on camera, whilst the Actress is more concerned with talking to her boyfriend on the phone than focusing on the film. Jeanne struggles throughout to create the scene as she sees it in her head, but through an oddly intimate relationship with her personal assistant, The Actor and The Actress, manages to coax the performance out of them in a strongly emotional climax.
Just as frustrations arise for Jeanne, i too found myself getting a little frustrated at the lack of pace - though this, perhaps, is the point of the film; documenting the arduous nature of film-making and the difficulties that can arise in trying to artificially create an intimate scene between strangers who may well hate each other. In this respect, Sex Is Comedy is a reflection on the nature of cinema Breillat is raising a mirror to the camera and giving us a 'behind the scenes' look at the problems which present themselves to directors, crews and casts.
At times, however, this concept becomes a little confusing. The boundaries between the film within the film, the film itself and Breillat's personal experiences becomes so blurred that it was difficult to discern quite what where we find ourselves. In short, whilst the film very interestingly focuses on the idea of mise-en-abyme, i found myself spiralling into the abyss without knowing quite how to take myself out of it.