Review of Sex Is Comedy (2002) by Leo S — 11 Mar 2005

Ah, the screwball sex farce. There's been a long history of zany screwball sex farces, and they're all neither funny nor sexy and shouldn't be watched. Thankfully, [i]Sex is Comedy[/i], a film brom Catherine Breillat, the director of the awful [i]Anatomy of Hell[/i], is not the screwball sex farce that the title suggests. Thank god.

No, it's a Catherine Breillat film, which means characters pontificate a lot obout stuff that sounds really important but ends up meaning absolutely nothing. Fortunately, the title seems to claim this is all supposed to be funny, so I'll give Breillat the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Perhaps it's Breillat's deadpan tone that distracts from the fact that we're supposed to be laughing at Jeanne (Anne Parillaud), the pompus director of a pompus coming of age story loosely based on Breillat's own [i]Fat Girl[/i]. [i]Sex is Comedy[/i] shows the anxieties of Jeanne and her two leading actors as they gear up to a very explicit sex scene, one that involves fully nudity and a lrge prosthetic penis.

The actor, you see, is a pompus asshole himself, and claims he's an artist who doesn't do things for money and won't take his socks off because "he's a fetishist." The actress is a cold fish who recoils at the actor's touch. Will Jeanne get these two stripped and ready in time for the blessed cinematic event?

In the mean time, there's lots of stodgy French dialogue along the likes of "Sex is the thing most often done and least often talked about" (I figured that would be nose picking) that doesn't hold up to close--or any--scrutiny. I'm figuring this is the "comedy" part of the film, and I did get quite a few chuckles.

There is some physical humor in the final reel, as the actor wanders around the set with a huge fake penis poking out of his robe, but outside of that, the comedy in question comes entirely from watching actors spout idiotic excuse as to why they don't do things. While the toneless nature of the film leaves it a far cry from, say, [i]Living in Oblivion,[/i] there is some fun to be had.

Of course, it is possible that this wasn't Breillat's intention at all. It's possible that she genuinely thought she was making a film that explores the nature of nudity and sex in cinema, and that she really meant the lead character to be a sincere extention of herself.

If so, then maybe [i]Sex [/i]is actually tragedy plus time, in which case Breillat needs to get off her overindulgent self and rewatch this thing--maybe she'll think it's as hysterical as I did.

(I still like [i]Fat Girl.)[/i].