Brief Crossing

Brief Crossing (2001, Catherine Breillat)
What is it about Catherine Breillat's films that are so beautiful? Aside from her reputation as a gory porn mistress, she is enormously tender (with the ability to make you feel like you're on the edge of a cliff emotionally and take everything away just as easily as she's given it to you). Her camera, documentary-like but often with poetic placement, observes minor, gentle inflections. She very strongly makes her characters exist in an environment -- here, a ship sailing. And even more strongly she can exploit a situation to great effect, such as one scene where the two newly acquainted lovers sit in a lounge, while the camera observes a magic show in the background with its cheesy mystery music scoring their drinking.

Breillat has a definite type -- dark, lean, nubile young men. But her female characters, demanding to be in the forefront with their frequent proclamations, are just as much of a type, intelligent and world-weary. In this, among the most affecting romance-while-traveling movies, she (Sarah Pratt) laments her age compared to his (Gilles Guillain) mere sixteen years. On their first meeting she seems mildly irritable, accepting his help (in the form of a cafeteria tray) only until she finds a better option elsewhere. As the two become more involved her insecurity around him reveals itself further, despite his gentle nature. With the ending you're unsure if this is a woman who breaks hearts along her way or if she ultimately views him as another in the line of brutes she generalizes men to be. This is a woman who isn't afraid to indulge in an affair, and she's not afraid to continue it -- but who selfishly, mechanically cuts herself off from feeling when it's necessary to do so. That's a lot for Breillat to put forth in the film's final scenes, but she does it, and it rests largely on the searching, wrenching face of Guillain, who frantically comes to the realization that, however cruelly, he's a little bit older now.