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''Sex Is Comedy'' is a 2002 comedy-drama film written and directed by
Catherine Breillat Catherine Breillat (; born 13 July 1948) is a French filmmaker, novelist and professor of auteur cinema at the European Graduate School. In the film business for over 40 years, Catherine Breillat chooses to normalize previously taboo subjects ...
. It revolves around a director ( Anne Parillaud) and her troubles filming an intimate
sex scene Sex in film, the presentation of aspects of human sexuality, sexuality in film, specially human sexuality, has been controversial since the development of the medium. Films which display or suggest sexual behavior have been criticized by religi ...
between two actors who cannot tolerate each other. Based on Breillat's experiences directing her 2001 film ''
Fat Girl ''Fat Girl'' (french: À ma sœur!, lit=To My Sister!) is a 2001 drama film written and directed by Catherine Breillat, and starring Anaïs Reboux and Roxane Mesquida. It was released in certain English-speaking countries under the alternative ...
'', the climax of the film features a recreation of a scene from that film, shot from the point of view of the crew, with Roxane Mesquida essentially reprising her role from the first film.


Cast

* Anne Parillaud as Jeanne *
Grégoire Colin Grégoire Colin (born 25 July 1975) is a French actor. Career Grégoire started acting on the French stage at age 12. He first caught the eye of critics in the 1992 Agnieszka Holland's psychological family drama ''Olivier, Olivier'' when he was ...
as the actor * Roxane Mesquida as the actress * Ashley Wanniger as Léo


Reception

On
review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 68% based on reviews from 47 critics, with an
average rating In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...
of 6.3/10. On
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Nev Pierce of
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
praised the direction by Catherine Breillat, writing " hedoes effectively capture the 'hurry up and wait' atmosphere of a film set, and draws excellent performances from all involved". Ed Gonzalez of '' Slant Magazine'' called the film an "ego trip", while Roger Ebert of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...
'' said that he is not sure "what it's really about, or how to get there". According to John Anderson of the ''
Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...
'' "It may be impossible ever to watch a sex scene again after seeing Catherine Breillat's ''Sex Is Comedy''. And that may precisely be the point". In a review for ''
The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'', Scott Tobias wrote, "''Sex Is Comedy'' triumphs mostly in laying out the specific mechanics of a love scene", while Ruthe Stein of ''
San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...
'' criticized the film for being " noying, soporific and, despite its title, singularly humorless".


References


Further reading

* Ince, Kate. (2006) ‘Is Sex Comedy or Tragedy? Directing Desire and Female Auteurship in the Cinema of Catherine Breillat’, ''The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 64(1), pp. 157–164. * Wheatley, Catherine. (2010) ‘Contested Interactions: Watching Catherine Breillat’s Scenes of Sexual Violence’, ''Journal for Cultural Research'', 14(1), pp. 27–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797580903363066


External links

* * 2002 films 2002 comedy-drama films 2000s French-language films 2000s Portuguese-language films Arte France Cinéma films Films about filmmaking Films directed by Catherine Breillat Films shot in Portugal French comedy-drama films Portuguese comedy-drama films 2000s French films {{2000s-France-film-stub