Brief Crossing (Breve Traversee)
by Catherine Breillat
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gilles Guillain, La?titia Lopez, Marc Filipi, Marc Jablonski, Sarah PrattDirector: Catherine Breillat
Brand: Genius
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 80 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-05-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Brief Crossing (Breve Traversee)
Movie Review: Engaging Breillat film but not for everybody
Summary: 3 Stars
An engaging character study about a thirty-something English-woman who meets a hot-headed French teenager on a London-bound ship. Over the course of one night, they meet cute, philosophize, fight, and eventually hook up.
Stylistically, this is far different from anything Breillat has done before or since.
In previous films, Breillat was notorious for exploring the sickening depths of human depravity via sexuality ("A Real Young Girl", "Romance" "36 Fillette") and violence ("Perfect Love", "Fat Girl"), and unafraid to show her characters fully nude and to film them in unsimulated sex scenes.
But here, Breillat's perfectly content to let her fully-clothed characters light up a smoke in the ship's dining hall and just chat. On the surface, this may sound like a retread of "Perfect Love", since Breillat had seemingly already explored the older woman/younger man territory.
But whereas Christophe in "Perfect Love" was a petualant brat (and more than likely a closet homosexual), Thomas here is a full-blooded teenager: precocious and intelligent, but also hopelessly naive.
If you're with the characters, you'll follow them all the way to the ship's dock. If you're bored to tears by their chats and with following them around the ship, then this film is not for you.
As usual, Breillat favors character over plot, and unlike most French filmmakers, she has no use for her New Wave predecessors' jazzy pacing and quick jump-cuts. She prefers a stationary camera (that cross-cuts between characters and precious little else) in order to let the scenes breathe and the performances build. Critics have thus complained about Breillat's leisurely pacing making her films artsy at best and downright boring at worst.
Which is a shame, since "Brief Crossing", pacing issues aside, is probably Breillat's most accessible work. There's sex, to be sure, but it's nowhere near as explicity depicted as in Breillat's previous "Romance" (and several years after this film with "Anatomy of Hell").
Bottom line: If you don't mind a grounded character study that centers on a love interest between a woman at the crossroads of her life and a boy whose ship is just beginning to sail, then by all means check it out. And if you're interested in Breillat, this is probably the perfect starting point, as you can then build up to the director's gritter, take-no-prisoners work.
But if you've never seen a European film and aren't used to the style, you'd best look elsewhere. There's no shoot-outs or flashy camera work. No CGI or MTV-casting. Just one night in the life of two regular people.
It's not Breillat's best film, but still a worthy addition to her scattered ouevre, and a nice left turn from her more uncompromising and polarizing works.
SIDE NOTE: The DVD also features a long interview with Breillat as she talks about the making of the film.
It's a fascinating interview to be sure, however it's marred by a language barrier.
The DVD producers chose to conduct an interview in English with Breillat.
Breillat speaks English fluently, but her French accent is so haltingly thick that her answers are often difficult to understand. As a result, the English language interview is sub-titled.
Anyone who's ever seen Breillat give an interview in her native tongue knows that the woman is a handful: Out-spoken and uncompromising. The DVD producers could've easily brought in a French interviewer for Breillat, or at least an off-screen translator so Breillat could answer the English questions in her own language.
Since we all just sat through a 90-minute French film sub-titled in English, do they really think we would've griped about a Special Feature having the same? Especially since they went and sub-titled the interview anyway....
Summary of Brief Crossing (Breve Traversee)
What starts as a chance meeting between a 30-something English woman Alice (Sarah Pratt) and a 16 year-old French boy (Gilles Guillan) quickly develops into much more on an overnight ferry ride. As the conversation progresses, it is clear that although the two have virtually nothing in common, the sexual tension is evident. When they finally act on their growing attraction, a surprise twist is thrown in that will leave you wondering who really seduced who.Art House & International DVD Video
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