Sex Is Comedy Movie Review

Sex may indeed be comedy, but Catherine Breillat's film is woefully lacking it altogether.

This extremely small and shallow film tells a singular tale: A movie director (Anne Parillaud) is having trouble getting her stars to go through with the movie's big sex scene. She tries everything: Gentle pressure, the hard sell, different settings. Ultimately it all comes down to using an oversized plastic phallus in the scene instead of the actor's real member, and our director is sure this will solve all the problems.

There's almost no doubt this film was inspired by Breillat's real-life experiences in making her perverse version of French terror-porn, and I'd wager that the film she's referencing specifically is Fat Girl, produced a year earlier and also starring Roxane Mesquida in a nearly identical situation. (I guess she got over her fear of the sex scene.) Parillaud even looks a lot like Breillat. Now that's humility: Making a movie about yourself!

Breillat's movies are pretty much take 'em or leave 'em, and this one's an utter dud (though Fat Girl made my top ten that year). Humorless, uninteresting, and wholly inaccessible to everyone except Catherine Breillat and a few of her pals, Sex Is Comedy is a mistitled disaster.