Catherine Breillat's Romance and Anatomy of Hell: Subjectivity and the Gendering of Sexuality

Abstract

French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has consistently challenged viewers to consider the ways women negotiate sexual freedom in light of numerous forces of repression. This essay considers how Breillat's depiction of women's sexuality in Romance and Anatomy of Hell simultaneously evokes abjection and empowerment. Specifically, we consider Breillat's contrast between her female protagonists and male protagonists, her treatment of women and their bodies as infused with desire yet struggling towards sexual subjectivity, and the avenues available to women to define themselves outside of hegemonic masculinity. We argue that Breillat's provocative portrayals provoke consideration of the problems inherent in hegemonic female sexuality while also offering hopeful alternatives to sexual expression, sexual freedom, and changing definitions of power and pleasure.

Keywords:

• Catherine Breillat
• French film
• women's sexuality
• sexual subjectivity
• sexual desire
• feminist film

Notes

1 Quoted in Gillian, Anne (2003) in Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France 1981—2001, ed. Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin & Isabelle de Courtivron, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 204

2 These two Breillat films contend with the issue of women's heterosexual sexuality, and, because we are discussing how these films speak to issues of hegemonic masculinity (largely read as heterosexual), we are focusing primarily on heterosexuality as well. This does not suggest that other modes of queering these films are not available, particularly by reading them as an indictment of heterosexuality and its ‘perverse’ pleasures, but this is beyond the scope of this particular essay.