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French film director charged over "erotic auditions"
One told the court Mr Brisseau often asked her to masturbate in front of him, sometimes in public places. She said she did 20 or 30 such "tests" between 1996 and 2001, some of them with another young hopeful. Some sessions were filmed by the director. "He said it was good to improvise all these things now, so as not to waste time on the set. And he said his eye was replacing the camera," she said. The investigating magistrate's report said the number of auditions, the fact they took place over several years, the conditions in which they were done and the fact Mr Brisseau masturbated in front of the actresses "excludes all artistic or cinematographic motive". It concluded: "It is abundantly clear ... that Mr Brisseau was seeking simply to satisfy his personal pleasure." François Blistene, Mr Brisseau's lawyer, said his client admitted doing a number of "short tests" with the women in hotel rooms, restaurants, a cinema and at his and the women's homes. But, he said, Mr Brisseau "vehemently denied" all charges against him. In an interview with Libération earlier this year the director said his idea of cinema was "to use sexual feelings in the same way that Hitchcock used fears". He added: "These erotic auditions are indispensable: I can work on the style and the acting before we film. They allow me to find out qualities and problems with their bodies and their acting." What a pig. An acclaimed, award-winning pig perhaps, but still a pig. And yet ... A lawyer for two of the women, Claire Doubliez, said outside court her clients were afraid "because they have broken the law of silence, and because it may look like they are complaining because they didn't get big parts. They want the court to acknowledge that they were manipulated and sullied, that they are not idiots." Couldn't the court conclude that they were manipulated, sullied idiots? Brisseau completed his film Choses Secrètes in 2002. Film Comment gave it a big thumbs up. Secret Things is an amalgam of genres bringing together an apprenticeship narrative à la Balzac (Lost Illusions is an explicit citation), softcore porn, a conte cruelle, and Hitchcockian suspense. The film describes the rapid social rise of Sandrine and Nathalie, two young women of now (and forever) who set out on a quest for power using sexuality as their principal weapon. They learn to arouse themselves, to control and simulate pleasure as needed, and to guard against love with a capital L, the main obstacle for aspiring femmes fatales. It may be the product of naiveté, and it certainly leads to a bloody catastrophe, but their program of political resistance is directly related to the imaginary. (In case you're wondering — yes, graduate students in film studies actually talk that way.) The film is available from Netflix, where one helpful reviewer writes: If you are in to watching beautiful women having sex, this is the movie for you. The opening routine is so artfully done, that I had to watch it several times. This is a wicked movie, but wonderfully so. These are really bad girls and I think I got some good ideas for myself. Great flick. Beautiful women. Artfully done so not to be cheap. Duly added to my queue.
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French film director Jean-Claude Brisseau, described herein as "acclaimed", has been