Movies
Film
Film
Film
J. Hoberman
Tuesday, October 5th 2004
Most Popular
-
You Can't Escape the Canvasser's Pitch 'Got a minute?' The young bleeding-heart carnivores who hunt you down on your lunch hour
-
The Coen Brothers Make Another Mockery with Burn After Reading Remarkably consistent, there's nothing these boys can't hold up to ridicule
-
No Witness Protection for Mobster Turned Snitch Joe Campy. PS: He's Hiding in Plain Sight. PPS: He has a web site.
-
Mickey Rourke is The Wrestler The onetime Hollywood A-lister climbs back in the ring with Darren Aronofsky's latest
-
Midway Through the Toronto Film Fest, and Things are Looking Bleak Oh, Canada
Straight to DVD, at least in the U.S., Brief Crossing demonstrates that Catherine Breillat is perfectly capable of directing a conventional narrative. The poet laureate of teenage sex here revels in the hormone-addled tango of a shipboard romance between a diffident French adolescent (Gilles Guillain) and an oddly bitter Englishwoman at least twice his age (Sarah Pratt). He's just a bit clumsy; she's nervously talkative and full of hostile generalizations about male sexual attitudes. This gemlike comedy of manners, composed largely of long behavioral takes—including a textbook-level scene shot in the ship's bar—is a bracingly cynical addition to the current cycle of tadpolian romances. If Brief Crossing were Fat Girl, the movie would end with the boat hitting an iceberg. It's not. Still, Breillat has succeeded in cooking up a brief encounter so captivating that although plenty of evidence is strategically planted, one barely sees the punchline coming.
Recent Articles
More by J. Hoberman
Mike Leigh's Optimistic Heroine in Happy-Go-Lucky Might Just Convince You to Cheer Up; Lola Montès Still Won't
Female persuasion
Bill Maher Makes an Adolescent Case Against Religion in Religulous; Muslim Comics Play It Safe in Allah Made Me Funny
Oh, God! You devil's advocate
BAM Goes Mad for Barbet Schroeder
Plus Film Forum celebrates Italian screen icon Alberto Sordi
New York Film Festival 2008
The Miraculous is Sublime in Director Carlos Reygadas's Stellet Licht
A divine light in Mennonite Mexico
show/hide comments (0)
write a comment
Site Search «
Village Voice Insiders
- Weekly villagevoice.com
- Weekly freebies and Special Offers
- Daily "What To Do in NYC" E-mail
- Information on the Performing Arts
- New York Bites - Restaurants Newsletter
| buy, sell, trade 5,319 | musician 3,075 |
| rentals 14,585 | jobs 5,375 |
| adult entertainment 9,786 | |
| classifieds | backpage.com | Post ads for free! | |
|---|---|
