Brief Crossing (2001) User Reviews

Just brilliant

[raymond-15 · 8/10 · 28 June 2004]

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.

Strangers on the ferry

[jotix100 · 8/10 · 26 August 2006]

Thomas, a young man on his way to England, is seen running to catch the ferry to Portsmouth. He almost misses the boat when the immigrations officer asks to see his papers, but he makes it on board. When he goes to eat, he stands behind a mysterious woman who doesn't want to have her chips with the roast beef she has ordered. She turns to Thomas to offer him her frittes, and he accepts. As fate would have it, they end up sharing the same table.Alice, who is older than Thomas, asks him to accompany him to the duty free shop thinking he can get extra liquor for her, but since he is a minor, he is refused. Thomas, who had told Alice he is 18, is in reality only 16.

They end up in the ship's disco for a drink. Alice who has about three stiff drinks suddenly becomes more talkative. The young man begins to caress her when he asks her to dance. All along Alice has told Thomas she is going home because she has broken a painful marriage. It's almost inevitable this pair would end up in bed. Thomas, who is not experienced, acts awkwardly with Alice.

As the ship is nearing Portsmouth, Thomas helps Alice with her luggage, but since he forgets his own suitcase, he runs back to get it, asking Alice to please wait for him. When he returns, she is gone. He runs after customs to try to catch with her, but he sees her in a car with a man and a small child leaving, without even looking at him!

Catherine Breillat's "Breve traversee" is a bittersweet story about a young man's awakening to sex. For being only 16, he is more sophisticated than some people in his age group. Alice, on the other hand, while acting bored at the outset, is looking forward to her night of love making because she probably has calculated this will go no further as they go in different directions. It's with sadness one sees how deeply the encounter has affected Thomas, who feels betrayed at the end.

As usual, Ms. Breillat directs the film with such an economy of details that what we see is a terse, but realistic way about how sometimes things happen. It's not always the romantic idea that Hollywood wants the viewer to see, but in many cases, like this, it's just a moment where things come together without any adornment.

Sarah Pratt, makes a cool Sarah. She is older, and wiser. Sarah sees her opportunity to have no strings attached sex with an impressionable young man she has no intentions of seeing again. Thomas, on the other hand, is nervous and awkward at first, then gains confidence and his preconceived idea is just a few minutes of sex. Gilles Guillain is good as Thomas.

Ms. Breillat tells a lot in an hour and twenty minutes!

A Crossing from Innocence to Awareness

[shushens · 8/10 · 3 January 2008]

After watching "Romance" and "The Anatomy of Hell", I felt like I had reason enough to believe, Catherine Breillat prioritizes sex and depressing visuals so much, the subtle things she tries to prove take backseat. But after watching Brief Crossing, my conception underwent a drastic polarity shift.

Thomas is a 16 year old seemingly typical French boy. Alice is probably British, and is around 30. Looks like she had a lot of dimensions to her that she lost from a years long slow heartbreak. Thomas thinks the usual social institutions like boyfriend-girlfriend relationships can't inhibit the French from satisfying their carnal needs any longer. Seems like he does not readily realize the gravity of what he says.

Sometimes, when a child is born in a battlefield and brought up in the neighbourhood, he looks at wars with the eyes of an innocent. He sees deaths, but does not realize what it is that seems so obvious like the sun and the moon. One day, a bullet hits him and the next moment, he is not innocent any more. Brief crossing is one such crossing. Crossing from sight to comprehension. Crossing from ideas of pain to pain itself. Crossing from Innocence to Awareness.

Brief Crossing, like a few others of its kind like "The Man from Earth" or "Broken English", depends solely on a few people's expressions. Not even an extra penny has been spent on refining anything that is not totally essential to help the movie reach its end. Of course it's not for everyone to watch. But those who like it once, will not forget it ere long.

Not recommended for general viewers or cinegoers. Highly recommended for "those" few.

Sarah Pratt: great acting

[henkpolman · 9 September 2002]

"Roastbeef. No chips". Something commonplace like this marks the beginning of a short relation between a woman and a young boy. A woman, who lost all her illusions about love and marriage. A young boy, attractive for the woman because he still is naive and innocent. It is especially the role played by Sarah Pratt that puts this film on a high level. Returning to the trivial roastbeef-and-chips-scène at the beginning of the film: the way Pratt argues with the waiter: "I don't want them!". That's great acting. With simple means and with only two persons that really make this film Catherine Breillat has done very good directors work. Placed in the chilly décor of a ferry boat two people attract each other and have something - something what? You can't really call it a love affair. What they do have together during the few hours of the boat trip looks tense, reliable and sometimes moving.

Two ships passing in the night

[=G= · 6/10 · 15 January 2005]

"Brief Crossing" is all about a 30 something woman and a 16 year old boy who meet during a ferry journey across the English channel. As the ferry takes us from La Havre to Portsmouth, the characters meet, shop, drink, dance, have sex, and ultimately part at their destination. Superficially, "Brief Crossing" is not much of a film. It has marginal production value, a cast of two, and a meager story. However, as a relationship film it is finely nuanced with a very natural ebb and flow of conversation, body language, evinced emotion, and human interaction. Not for everyone, this worthy addition to auteur Breillat's resume will be most appreciated by French film devotees. (B-)

Sea Change

[writers_reign · 7/10 · 3 December 2008]

I almost gave this one a miss having seen a couple of Breillat films that were virtually hardcore porn with mainstream actors - Francois Berleand, Amira Casar - and been underwhelmed. However, compared to things like Romance and Anatomy Of Hell, Breve Traversee is Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm. Okay, there is a sexual encounter and yes, it is fairly graphic but no more so than stuff we can on TV nowadays. Breillat takes a lot of time building up to the encounter, giving us time to get to know and perhaps like and/or empathise with one or both protagonist. It's fairly basic; a channel crossing, two people travelling alone, a chance meeting, then a second one, an evening spent together over a meal and a couple of drinks, mutual attraction growing subtly - not a word I thought I'd ever use in the same sentence as Breillat - stronger until the inevitable coupling in the cabin setting up an ending as poignant as that in its almost namesake Brief Encounter. In sum: the finest work I've seen from Breillat.

Catherine Breillat's best work I've seen.

[dfs-2 · 10/10 · 30 July 2002]

I saw this at the Auckland International Film Festival this year and with so little spare time I had to really be picky and selected what I thought was the 10 best films including `Y tu mama tambien' (which received critical acclaim). Personally I thought this was the best.

This film is set on an overnight ferry trip across the English channel, it begins with a chance encounter between two lone travellers, namely a 16 year old boy Thomas and a middle aged woman Alice. Seasoned lone travellers will know that keeping company with other lone travellers is a good way to pass time. This is how their relationship develops. Thomas wants what most young men his age want, a sexual encounter. Alice on the other hand portrays herself as a sophisticated yet vulnerable woman surviving a mid life crisis. Sounds like a volatile combination right? Well you will have to see this film to the end, which has one of the best endings I can remember.

Now some notes about the cast and crew. This film introduces Gilles Grippon (Thomas) and he plays his role well, a teenager trying to be cool yet unsure of himself and impressionable. Sarah Pratt was absolutely gorgeous and stunning as Alice. She really held together those scenes sans the dialog when the couple were just exchanging glances. This film is not wholly a French language film as English is almost equally spoken throughout. Sarah has an excellent command in both. I am surprised so little is known about this beautiful and talented actress. I hope to see her in more films to come.

This is the fourth Catherine Breillat film I have seen and the best so far. Like all her other films she deals with the character's sexual intricacies but it does not have the pornographic taint of `Romance', the violence found in `A Ma Soeur!' or any of the disturbing scenes found `A Real Young Girl' (one of her early films but only recently released because it had been banned). Also well translated on screen especially with the use of lighting is the feel of being on the channel ferry. Having been on one myself it brought back memories.

I would love to own this on DVD if it ever comes out. 10/10

A lyrical love affair, full of deep observations

[Chris_Docker · 9/10 · 6 April 2008]

Have you ever thought about why you suspend disbelief for some films and not others? Or for some chat-up lines and not others? What about if it's someone you really fancy?

Half way through Brief Crossing, Alice says, "Men put you in a box and you go into it just like a goose cos you think there's nothing more beautiful than love." She and Thomas are seducing each other but there is always a resistance. For Alice, it is Thomas' lack of confidence, clumsiness and inexperience (he is sixteen going on eighteen). For Thomas, it is the inbuilt ability of any woman to say no in order to say yes. Alice, railing against men and educating Thomas at the same time, explains it: "It's exciting to disconnect them and see how they return the attack." But if Brief Crossing is a complex and intellectually fertile examination of emotion and truth-telling in the areas of romance and seduction, it is also one of Breillat's most accessible works. It is one of the few that can be enjoyed as a brief, sexy, and entirely believable romance. The quasi-philosophical banter becomes background noise. We wait, like voyeurs, for the mutual cat-and-mouse to play itself towards a passionate conclusion.

They meet on an overnight sea crossing from France to Portsmouth. Share a table in a crowded diner. She fixes him with her gaze until he stops fumbling with his food, a cigarette, anything. Eventually he has to return it or risk losing her. And we know he is attracted to her - though too shy to know what to do. While Thomas drinks only cola, she fortifies herself with several brandies. Her attentions slowly give him confidence, the 'cool' that she desires of him.

But give him too much and his confidence becomes arrogance. She has to push him away again, make him chase her. Push too far, and he will leave, humiliated.

How to make that brief meeting of minds? A union that is long enough, mutually wanted enough, for something exciting to happen? He takes her life and death references literally. She points out that she is only trying to get him to be romantic. Choosing to accept where someone else is coming from, their truth, their reality, is no more than a convenient shorthand. An arrangement from where we can proceed on common ground. An act of good faith.

Sarah Pratt (who will work with Breillat again several years later in Une Vieille Maîtresse), gives a finely nuanced performance as Alice. Especially when the ending throws new light on her whole story. But Gilles Guillain, as the young Thomas, is cringingly realistic as the hot-blooded and woefully inexperienced young lover. Volleyed between embarrassment and lust, hormones raging up a steep learning curve, it is a state that many male viewers will feel ashamed to recall.

Breillat has frequently proclaimed that she only makes films about women since, being a woman, that is all she knows about. Yet in addition to the (sometimes scathing) examination of the female psyche, she is expert in how the male gaze is experienced by the woman, and adept at extracting realistic performances from young male actors (this would be repeated in films such as A Ma Soeur and explained in Sex is Comedy).

Breillat has sometimes been likened to a female of De Sade. Not through any penchant for perversion perhaps as for her flagrant disregard for convention in being open about matters sexual. Yet in Brève Traverse, hers is similar to his literary style in another respect: she alternates fairly heavyweight discourse with elements of a more graphic nature. In some of her later films (Romance, Anatomie de l'enfer), this can become an arduous experience, especially for viewers unfamiliar with her ideas. But in Brève Traverse the intellectual content is more a gentle college lesson in seduction. With analogies on gender politics added for those that can keep up at the back. All delivered with the silver tongue of a woman out to get her man.

I used to think 'truth' was in the ears of the beholder. "Is this glass empty?" – well it depends whether I am standing in a bar or a physics laboratory. But Breillat is helping persuade me it is only at the discretion of the beholder. Would you agree? And what if you happen to be on your second brandy; the stars a canopy and the sea below; if our pheromones are intertwine; and nothing we say now will matter at the end of the crossing? Will your answer be the same?

Pornographic?

[Sebastian-20 · 9/10 · 6 April 2003]

I've never seen a Catherine Breillat movie until this one was broadcasted. People tend to say that what she makes is pornographic, but it is so much more than that. Even during the sex-scene's there's a lot of talking going on. Sarah Pratt as Alice reminds me of Isabelle Huppert, a bit cold and distant, but she and Gilles Guillain did a great job in acting. Overall a very good movie shot on a low budget!

Initiation into manhood...

[genytenshii · 9/10 · 27 August 2006]

The other day, I was telling my friend about a couple of films that I've seen directed by Catherine Breillat (Romance and Anatomy of hell) and how they've really opened my eyes to French cinema. My friend then lent me a DVD, which was "Brief Crossing" and I put it in, holding my breath to see what else Breillat could offer. Most of the comments on the board have already outlined what happens in the movie, so I won't comment too much on the storyline. However, the movie had left me so intrigued and inspired, I also watched the extra features and the short interview with the director. Her explanations of the film have opened my eyes more to the film and it's meanings. The question of who is seducing whom... is an interesting concept. In one way, we see Thomas attempting to act like a man to appear more attractive to Alice. He continually rebuts her condemnations of men being all bad and evil and reminds her that he is not like that. And she, at the same time, continues to appear to reject his subtle advances, speaking ill of men, as if she could predict exactly what his thoughts and intentions would eventually be. I think there are many interpretations of this film. Some find it a love story of sorts, while others thought it was an interesting brief fling between two people who just wanted to get it on. I had a slightly different one. In fact, I had little sympathy for Alice and her little ways. It seemed as though she was merely bored and longed for a little excitement in her married life. And so she, the experienced one, sets out her trap to capture the innocent, virgin Thomas. Every line that she spoke, was merely a reverse psychological tactic to attract Thomas. And attract him, it did. "Don't be like the other men..." And he, "I'm not like the others". Her false objections to them sleeping together, only made him want to sleep with her more. And she clearly was aware of that. Although Catherine Breillat is a feminist director, in some ways, this movie was also very anti-feminist. Unless, her intention was to show that women are highly capable of being the manipulators that they are to get what they want. She claims it is an exploration of a woman's sexual fantasy- I guess most women want to sleep with younger men, but this borders on sexual predatoriness (And yes, I made that word up). Breillat notes in her interview that Alice's deception clearly gives Thomas the opportunity to finally become a man. To accept the disappointment and to be realistic about romance- because he clearly thought their brief fling might possibly develop into a relationship of some sort. He'll probably grow up to be a total a**hole because of this experience too. (in my humble opinion) Overall, this movie was a fantastic experience and there is much to discuss if you've watched it with your friends.

Its kind of a Before Sunrise meets The Graduate.

[heymuche · 10/10 · 22 July 2002]

I love this film! Brève traversée [Brief Crossing] was part of the Brisbane International Film Festival, I saw 23 films and this was by far my favourite! The story focused around a young (16) boy and a 30 something woman on a ferry. The two meet in the lunch line and for lack of anywhere else to sit, they sit together. A conversation starts up that lasts them hours and away we go. The film follows their discussions & then sexual relationship. Its kind of a Before Sunrise meets The Graduate. I just loved their discussions and the glances the two share - the 2 actors are sensational, they make the film work. One quote I recall (which I rather like) said by the woman 'Alice' talking about how pointless life can be: "The irony is in order to make a living you have to spend time!" ......5 stars!

Endings

[tedg · 23 February 2006]

There are plenty of good writers, at least it seems so. But not very many good filmmakers.

Obviously, this is somewhat due to the nature of film-making being a collaborative enterprise that involves large numbers of people. Where it seems to impinge most is in beginnings and endings. Readers need to make only a little adjustment to be coaxed into a different space, and the unwinding or knotting at the end is also easier, though more challenging.

Film requires the viewer to make more severe adjustments in entering the world that's fabricated. And very few seem to have been able to figure out endings that work.

Put this together and you'll see why we have some filmmakers that have great skills at creating "middles" but are disasters elsewhere. Brelliat is one of these, possibly the most fascinating. Set aside that all her films explore the same space. That's not fatal. When she gets us to where she wants, she can often assemble a tableau that is as effective as anything in film.

Very troubling and touching stuff, that. Immediate and emotional. But she takes such a torturous route to set it up and place it in that special zone. Lots of uncinematic talking and preparatory narrative. Then we'll have her sometimes sublime state.

And then without fail, we'll have a messy ending. Not well conceived. So she plays the youth card and does something shocking and sometimes violent. It mars that special space of a thousand desired needlepricks she so carefully laces.

She knows this. So in this movie, a study really, she focuses on the ending. Everything is designed to give her a real ending, one that sets those needles and leaves them in after you leave the theater. Good for her. This and "Sex is Comedy" shows that she is surrounding her own limitations in public essays. Taken together, they're powerful stuff.

The story here is a woman and a boy, and a dance, an episode and then an ending that reveals intentions.

This is hard work all of this. You need to know something of her other work, of her life. And of the bankrupt nature of French film-making right now, and the analogies some make with the impossibilities that real love can exist.

Also some notion of how we build desire in our lives, the immediate part, out of cinematic components to be eaten as it it were a meal.

Yes, it is hard work. And you'll have to live through lots of bad endings. Like life, like love.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Breillat...as ever

[jinkylubolarsson · 9/10 · 14 January 2010]

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.

One word Masterpiece

[jayraskin1 · 3 November 2011]

Why is it in the twilight of cinema only the French can produce masterpieces? This is the first Catherine Breillat movie that I've seen. I'll be on the lookout for them from now on. This ranks with the masterpieces of the French cinema. It is Truffaut (youthful innocence), Godard(ballet of camera movement with independent activities in foreground and background and Blier (absurdity, realism and sex) all rolled together. This is the human spirit revealed. It is erotic, at least it is a study in erotic passion, but it is as far from pornography as film gets. Sarah Pratt's acting is superb. I hope she won a caesar for this.

Great movie !!! :-)

[maxime60 · 10/10 · 5 September 2003]

Hi, i saw "Brève Traversée" for the first time on ARTE If you don't have seen this movie yet, i really recommend it !

The actors are really good and , little by little, you get into it really easly and nicely. there's a lot of emotions between this boy young boy and the women . you reconize yourself easly in one of those two . I really enjoy it and again, i recommend to see this GREAT movie

MAXIME - Vanves 92 - France

Crossed Crossing

[frankgaipa · 10/10 · 2 September 2002]

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.

coming of age story without any interesting

[kano_only_king · 4 February 2023]

"Brief Crossing" is a coming of age story about a young woman named Lucie who is searching for her own identity and sexual awakening. During a ferry ride, she meets a handsome stranger named Mathieu, and the two of them begin a brief love affair. Lucie, who is engaged to be married, is initially drawn to Mathieu because of his free-spirited and carefree attitude, but as their relationship deepens, she realizes that he is not who he seems and is actually hiding a dark secret. The film explores the complexities of desire, love, and sexuality, as Lucie learns to reconcile her own desires with her responsibilities and obligations to others.

*spoiler part* Mathieu is revealed to be a drug dealer and is traveling with a large quantity of illegal drugs. This realization brings Lucie's infatuation with him to an abrupt end and forces her to face the realities of his dangerous and criminal lifestyle. The film ends with Lucie returning home, having gained a deeper understanding of herself and the complexities of love and desire.

*spoiler part*

Whether a movie is worth watching is a matter of personal opinion. Some people may enjoy "Brief Crossing" for its exploration of love, desire, and sexuality, while others may not be interested in these themes or may not enjoy the film's style. If you are a fan of coming of age stories or French cinema, or if you are interested in films that deal with complex themes and emotions, then you may find "Brief Crossing" to be a film worth watching. However, if these themes or styles do not interest you, then you may not enjoy the film.