Brief Crossing

Brief Crossing is one of those films whose surface approach is a deceptive ploy revealed by a twist only in its final stages. It is a two-hander telling of a casual sexual encounter between a self-possessed seventeen year old French boy, Thomas (Gilles Guillain), and an emotionally-disaffected Englishwoman, Alice (Sarah Pratt) in her thirties.

Breillat is a feminist writer-director and her primary concern is conceptual. Her Alice appears to have read a lot of French critical theory and she takes the opportunity of having a randy young would-be paramour to expound it with unlikely Gallic loquacity. He on the other hand bats it away with single-minded purpose. Unless you are familiar with, or find appealing, Breillat's intellectual frame of reference this will probably be unconvincing stuff - as drama it's all rather coldly played out but even if the standard all-men-are-swine position is over-exposed, even given the film's short running time, if you see it through, the director cleverly sidesteps the party line.

 

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