Sex Is Comedy

A director struggles to film a difficult sex scene with two actors who hate each other, in Catherine Breillat's exploration of intimacy coordination.

French cinema's arch provocateur, Catherine Breillat, investigates and attempts to understand what happens on a film shoot when scenes involving physical intimacy arise.

How can something as intimate as the sexual act be captured on film? How can psychological and logical reality, along with the 'show' aspect of the act, be set aside, so that one is just left with the body? Made many years before the advent of Intimacy Coordinators on film sets, Breillat's film remains a key text on cinematic sex and bodily objectification, as well as arguably her funniest and most approachable work.