Bird's Eye View

Bluebeard: An Interview with Director and Screenwriter Catherine Breillat

Catherine Breillat is an award winning French Director – she is also a screenwriter and novelist.  She is known for exploring issues of sexuality, gender conflict and sibling rivalry – and has been the subject of controversy over the years.  Her latest film Bluebeard, is a reworking of a Charles Perrault fable.

Birds Eye View caught up with Catherine to talk about it. 

You’ve added your own twist with a feminist slant to a classic French fairytale – what was it that attracted you to this fable in the first place and why change the ending?

This is my favourite fairy tale. It is a story for children but it’s meant to frighten. It’s astonishing that it is a tale about a young girl who loves/likes a man that is going to kill her despite her knowing what it is going to happen to her. She chooses to marry him not because he is rich, but because they are two outsiders that meet/find each other.

She doesn’t see the monster everyone sees –  the monster is not a monster, but everyone considers him to be.

The Catherine in the telling of the tale and the Catherine in her projection of herself in the tale represent you – they are both the youngest of both sets of sisters, quite precocious and manipulative. How autobiographical were they in terms of character?

You always project. In any given book or film you can always project from inside and then you discover something about yourself. Marie-Catherine is the projection of the Catherine of the tale. Compared with her sister, she is the youngest but also the strongest within the attic.

The youngest sister frightens the eldest and shows her that she is more mature and courageous. Despite everything, the second sister, the youngest one, always suffers from not being the first one.

I (Breillat) have an older sister. It was a great pleasure for me to make her cry a second before I started crying too. Seconds later I would cry, but my eldest sister never knew.

Catherine Breillat - Director and Screenwriter

There are lots of themes in Bluebeard, fear and control, sibling rivalry, innocence, as well as temptation and female curiosity -  with the consequences not always being positive.  Was this your intention? Are you able to expand on these ideas?

What was interesting to me was that this is a very peculiar tale by Perrault. It was transmitted throughout Europe and it reached Japan and USA. In France, Bluebeard is one of the first serial killers in literature. Perrault was inspired by Gilles de Rais, he was a Lord and a serial killer whose wives disappeared too, together with young girls and boys from his county. He was also the best friend of Joan of Arc. I think he was a Count. The youngest girl he married turned to out to be the strongest.

There is latent sexual power themes and imagery in Bluebeard, but different from your previous films there is no explicit sex scenes. Is there a change of tone in your direction?

If I had shot explicit sex scenes I would be in prison because the girls were too young. In any case, this is a tale about desire, manipulation and its obscure object.

There is a small door that hasn’t been crossed. The fact that she is too young for him, makes him his teacher. He cannot have sexual desires for her. She is forbidden.

Did having a stoke affect your filmmaking – do you think mortality changes attitudes?

When you grow older it means the end of virginity, of beauty, of eternity. All this gets away from the young girl.

What’s next for you – I understand you’re working on an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty?

I’ve just finished La Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty). There will be a big premiere at Venice.

I’m thinking about doing a trilogy on fairy tales, to discover the hidden side of these tales and also of oneself. I have not yet chosen the third tale.

Cristina Moreno spoke to Paris based Director Catherine Breillat. Questions by Lucy Aronica.

Blue Beard is out on Friday. Show your support for Catherine Breillat and women filmmakers by going to see it. For more information, visit our First Weekenders page.