Powwow People
$11.50
Dir. Catherine Breillat
2023, France, 104 min
Rated 18A
French with English subtitles
Anne, a brilliant lawyer, lives in perfect harmony with her husband Pierre and their six and eight-year-old daughters, in a house on the heights of Paris. One day, Theo, 17, Pierre’s son from a previous marriage, moves in with them. Anne is troubled by Theo and gradually engages in a passionate relationship with him, putting her career and family life in danger.
Presented in partnership with Alliance Française du Manitoba. Generously sponsored by the Ambassade de France au Canada.
“Breillat skillfully addresses the anxiety of Anne’s lost youth while showing the unfortunate consequences of Theo’s flirtation with adulthood.” – Jourdain Searles, RogerEbert.com
“Breillat’s sharp writing and even sharper camera make for a cinematic challenge, a cinematic gem.” – Drew Gregory, Autostraddle
“I often like to say that I am not scandalous but that I am a scandal, and that society has actually denied me the right to exist.”
This summer, the Dave Barber Cinematheque presents Female Perversions: The Films of Catherine Breillat, featuring four explicit, transgressive and emotionally ambiguous works – Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2001), Anatomy of Hell (2004), and Last Summer (2023).
Over the last three decades, Catherine Breillat has clinically charted sexuality and its intersections with power and intimacy. In her films, she treats sexual politics as philosophical and coldly analytical, confronting the viewer with the explicit taboos around the body. Her films explore the adolescent obsession with the loss of virginity, masochism, misogyny, and female sexuality. For Breillat, there is always an element of power involved in pleasure.
Transgressive and challenging, Female Perversions aims to explore the career of a singular and unapologetic filmmaker whose films examine the meaning of bodies from social, political and personal angles.
Presented in partnership with Alliance Française du Manitoba. Generously sponsored by the Ambassade de France au Canada.
