- The problem is that censors create the concept of obscenity. By supposedly trying to protect us they form an absurd concept of what is obscene.
- It's a joke - if men can't desire liberated women, then tough. Does it mean they can only desire a slave? Men need to question the roots of their own desire. Why is it that historically men have this need to deny women to be able to desire them?
- For me, the outrage is that the world needs to know about the loss of virginity. There is such guilt associated with the fact that you want to make love, that you demand that your lover speaks words of love, whether he means them or not.
- It's not just freedom to do a particular act. It's not consumerism. If you think of an orgy or falling in love, everyone would rather fall in love because it's really transcendental. The problem is that all governments and all religions have always been determined to make sex something dirty. Religion is afraid of the power of sex - because a person who can find the transfiguration of sex in her life is no longer a person who can be directed.
- If you want to preserve your virginity, it's about not wanting to belong to the human species. To make love is not just to have the pleasure of flesh, but to have the pleasure of flesh escaping flesh. The sexual act involves a mental transfiguration, too.
- I am the pariah of French cinema. That can make things complicated for me: it is never easy to drum up a budget or to find a distributor for my films in France. Some people refuse even to read my scripts. But it also makes me very happy because hatred is invigorating. All true artists are hated. Only conformists are ever adored.
- If I stop making films, I will die. I can tell myself that one day I will stop living. But I cannot bear the fact that the day will come when I will no longer be making films.
- In American cinema you find handsome men, whereas in French cinema you find male stars who are usually not very good looking at all. Fifty years from now, when people watch French movies and see these absolutely ravishing actresses who fall head over heels in love with Gérard Depardieu, they'll shake their heads and wonder what exactly was wrong with France.
- I once wrote an article called 'The Importance of Being Hated', and though I would rather be loved and adored, because I am a human being like everyone else, I think the world still needs people who can speak their truth without fearing the consequences.
- [on Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)] I do think Kechiche spent way too long shooting that sex scene. He shot it over two weeks, whereas I would have done it in a day. You can't put actresses in that position for 15 days. I've always shot such scenes very quickly, because being in an exposed situation like that for 15 days can make an actress feel like a prostitute. So I understand why they were upset.
- [2018 interview, on Asia Argento's allegations against Harvey Weinstein] To be very honest, I don't believe Asia. I know her, and she was very, very young...If there's anyone I don't believe, it's Asia Argento. As a person, Asia Argento is quite servile. I never asked her to kiss my feet, but she's that kind of person. I don't believe Asia. If there's anyone capable of defending herself, who's not timid about sex, who does it a lot, and has lots and lots of desire for both men and women, it's her. So I don't believe Asia. For Asia, it was obviously, let's say, motivated by self-interest - it was a kind of semi-prostitution. Harvey Weinstein's not the worst man there is; he's not the most stupid, either. Asia may have been disappointed that she didn't become a great Hollywood actress she might have been, but there were lots of other things: drugs, many other things. She feels bitter. Because bitterness, too, can lead people to denounce if you wanted to obtain something and you didn't obtain it, if you feel humiliated. Quite honestly, I don't like Asia. I think she's a mercenary and a traitor.
- [2019 interview, referring to her 2018 interview and Asia Argento] I wasn't very happy about that whole situation. I felt ambushed - I expected my normal translator to be with me and I expected to just speak about my films. Then all of a sudden, the interviewer brings up Asia Argento, who is someone I never want to talk about. I greatly admire Asia as an actress and find her appalling as a person. Apart from making clear the personal disdain I felt working with her, I did not want to get into her allegations against Harvey Weinstein. Still, I think she's a formidable and charismatic actress.
- [press conference for The Last Mistress (2007) at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival] I love dandyism, the era of the 19th century, and I think it's one of the most beautiful and fabulous French novels. If I had lived in the century of Barbey d'Aurevilly, I would have been Barbey d'Aurevilly. I'm sure of it. That era attacked things considered transgressive and the book was thought of as scandalous, but you can see that it's not scandalous - it's amazing. This book was written by a man. I consider myself as a painter. And the signature of a painter is his name. My name is Breillat. My gender is feminine but I haven't shown that on the screen.
- [on The Last Mistress (2007)] I have a very difficult love/hate relationship with France. Certain audiences and critics do adore me, but a lot hate me. So I didn't want them to know that I had this brain haemorrhage [in 2004]. I didn't want them to say: "Great, we've got rid of her, she's gone ga ga." I wanted to prove that I could do my biggest film. And it was only at that point that I showed myself in France. Not before.
- [press conference for Last Summer (2023) at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival] I do exactly as I like; if there's a story, I fashion it in my own guise. We have the scene with a lie which is outstanding in terms of screenplay. I felt the whole thing was so magnificent I wanted to use it. Then there was a teenager, and as you know, I'm passionately interested in adolescents and teenagers. The woman is very enigmatic - there are changes with the original of course - she's no longer a predator, she depicts a whole range of things, she's far more impressive in terms of nuanced performance.
- [Cannes press conference for Last Summer (2023)] The love scenes were almost improvised as the filming progressed. It wasn't forseen that they would fall in love in such a way. That's what's so wonderful about images and frames. You frame the actors - I look at them through a screen in fact - the actors become beings of light; and suddenly they transfigure themselves and become my dreams, my fantasies brought to life in the film. But I need to see them in a frame. I discover the actors as they are, but in fact a camera is the light - through this light it suddenly becomes very impressive. And that's what cinema is all about. All of a sudden you see the characters in an amazing way and that gives you the frames. It's almost as if the camera was devouring the characters - I do a lot of close-ups. There was a moment when I suddenly identified with my actors so much, I realised they had become the characters, they'd become my film. It wasn't before that they inspired me in this way - it was then, at that moment. That's what art is all about, and that's the cinema. It's not that you're improvising; it's just that the film is ready when it's ready in itself. You can say to the actors you have to do this, you have to do that, don't turn round, talk normally........I'm behind the camera, I watch, I observe very carefully. It's very complicated, they have to be extremely natural. It's about a real choreography and the right frames.
- [Cannes press conference for Last Summer (2023)] I don't make films in a didactic way. Things are very accurate and precise. I'm a feminist, but I've always said that when I want people to hate my films people say, "Well, she a feminist", but above all I'm a filmmaker, I like to study things carefully. There are all sorts of misconceptions, preconceived ideas and you can see that a love scene is something where we put our lives at stake. We cannot represent a love scene in a mediocre way, otherwise we'll be put into a given category, into a given box. In former times, actresses would talk about naked scenes, well, these are things one should refuse to do. Scenes have to have a meaning and have to add a very precise meaning to the film. You have to see what you look like in life at a time when you're not actually looking at yourself in the mirror. That's what films do. To know who you are, you have to recognise who you are and you only see really naked love scenes in pornographic films, or else directors tend to avoid them. I don't want to avoid them because they should be shown in a totally different way, in a state of total intimacy where you're just yourself and your bare self is bared to the other.
- [Cannes press conference for Last Summer (2023)] When I find the right actors, I realise they're just right and it could be nobody else. When Léa [Léa Drucker] accepted the role and came to see me, I realised it was her. She was Anne. She has this Bergman dimension to her which would make her credible as a lawyer and I thought I could lead her on to something more. During filming the actors haunted me at night, and I thought to myself in the middle of the night, "Well I know that she could give me this or that," and I'd make little amendments to the script accordingly. It's such a pleasure to make a film. I don't improvise anything but making something entails a degree of improvisation. When you write ten pages you're in a trance, you go into a world of writing - you create the characters, you're imagining them. You're in a state of trance, and when you start to film it's the same. When I first filmed a close-up of Samuel I suddenly understood - my assistant said to me that we'd want to be in Léa's place! And I realised that things were just perfect, just right.
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