La belle endormie

At the Venice International Film Festival: La belle endormie, directed by Catherine Breillat

I really liked her Bluebeard, so I'm curious to see what Breillat does with a slightly less weird fairy tale. Although I've heard that earlier versions of Sleeping Beauty had the princess awakening from the suckling of the baby that was conceived and born while she was in her coma. That makes it weirder.

Synopsis from the festival's website:

Once upon a time... In a castle somewhere in a bygone age... The fairy Carabosse cuts the umbilical cord of a newborn babe, a little girl called Anastasia. Three young scatterbrained fairies appear, their cheeks red from running... Too late, says Carabosse, at sixteen the child’s hand will be pierced and she’ll die.

The young fairies burst into tears! Their tardiness didn’t deserve that. Now they must ward off the fatal curse... They just manage to predict that instead of dying, Anastasia will fall asleep for 100 years.

Sleeping for a century is very boring, so they bestow on her the possibility of wandering far and wide in her dreams during those 100 years of sleep...

Great Directors

Opening this weekend: Great Directors, directed by Angela Ismailos

Synopsis from the film's website:

A deeply personal and intimate look at the art of cinema and the artists who create it, Great Directors is a celebration of films and film-making starring ten of the world’s most acclaimed, provocative, and individualistic living directors, featuring original, in-depth conversations with Bernado Bertolucci, David Lynch, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles. These interviews more than just chronicle Ismailos’ encounters with ten remarkable men and women. Extensively illuminated by clips and historical archives from the subjects’ works, they also reveal the distinctive personalities who created the timeless images that have long inspired Ismailos-and all of us. Intercutting among the filmmakers in a freely associative way, Ismailos explores each director’s artistic evolution; the role of politics and history on their work; their feelings about the other great directors who inspired them (with Bertolucci paying homage to Pasolini, Breillat to Bergman, and Haynes to Fassbinder, etc); and the agony and ecstasy of being an artist in a medium that is, paradoxically, also an industry.

In Theaters: Bluebeard (Barbe bleue)

Opening this weekend at the IFC Center in New York: Bluebeard, directed by Catherine Breillat

Ooh, this looks so creepy... can't wait!

Synopsis from AllMovie:

Controversial filmmaker Catherine Breillat puts a new spin on an ancient story in this multileveled drama. In France in the mid-'50s, Catherine (Lola Créton) enjoys toying with her younger sister, Anne (Daphné Baiwir), by reading her the story of the murderous and oft-married Bluebeard, embellishing the story with plenty of gore and scaring the child out of her wits. As Catherine rereads the story, we're taken back to the year 1697, as Lord Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) prepares to make Marie-Catherine (also played by Créton) his seventh wife. Marie-Catherine's youth and innocence make her an especially attractive quarry to Bluebeard, and rather than murder her right away, he decides to wait a while in order to savor the terrible joy of claiming her life. However, as Bluebeard becomes caught in a cycle of events that keep him from following through on his wife's murder, the two slowly become something like a normal couple and Marie-Catherine begins to turn the tables on her spouse. Barbe Bleue (aka Bluebeard) received its world premiere at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival.

Netflix It: Fat Girl

Available from Netflix: Fat Girl, directed by Catherine Breillat

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

Director Catherine Breillat, who courted international controversy with her film Romance, once again pushed the envelope with this disturbing (if somewhat less explicit) look at adolescent sexuality. Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) is a 12-year-old girl with a weight problem and a downbeat disposition growing up in a family that offers her little in the way of understanding and affection. Anaïs has a typically adolescent love/hate relationship with her slimmer and prettier 15-year-old sister, Elena (Roxane Mesquida); she's at once fascinated by her sister (and the boys who follow her around), and hates her for the love and attention she receives from others. While the family spends the summer at the beach, Elena attracts the attentions of Fernando (Libero de Rienzo), a college student from Italy who makes no secret of his attraction to Elena's budding sexuality. Anaïs, on the other hand, is forced to make do with a sad game in which she pretends that a ladder and a diving board at a neighborhood swimming pool are two suitors vying for her affections. Anaïs shares a room with Elena, and finds herself a fascinated, if troubled, witness as Fernando uses both charm and deceit to rob her sister of her virginity, while Elena is too naïve to see through the lies Fernando is spinning—and enjoys having Anaïs as an audience for her steadily advancing sex play with Fernando. Anaïs is more aware than her older sister of Fernando's insincerity, but she finds Elena isn't eager to believe her.

Barbe Bleue

Showing at the New York Film Festival: Barbe Bleue, written and directed by Catherine Breillat

Synopsis from the New York Film Festival website:

Boudoir philosopher Catherine Breillat’s bloody chamber piece takes an outrageously deadpan approach to Charles Perrault’s grisly bedtime story about the aristocratic ogre who marries and murders a series of wives. Her Bluebeard is a middle-aged behemoth, easily four times the size of his child bride. The fairytale is acted out in a 16th century setting and explicated, often hilariously, by a contemporary pair of young sisters. The more sexually curious of the two is named Catherine and the movie’s double ending, while not exactly Perrault’s, is pure Breillat. The French director’s idiosyncratic follow-up to her sensuously carnal, literary period piece, The Last Mistress (NYFF 2007), is a perversely chaste and highly personal adaptation of Perrault’s classic fairytale.

Trailer (in French, no subtitles):