Brief crossing

Not so surprisingly, one of cinema's most successful directors of movies with bold sexual themes is a Frenchwoman, Catherine Breillat. Her 2001 movie, Brief Crossing, having been commissioned for French TV, is a short (80 mins) and bitter-sweet tale of inter-generational lust.

A 30-something French-speaking Englishwoman meets a virginal French youth half her age on an overnight ferry to Portsmouth. She has a cabin with twin beds, which she pushes together by the end of the trip. After having a cafeteria meal, cabaret-bar drinks, and exchange of views (hers, mostly) about males and female relationships, the older woman guides him to her cabin, and ends up smiling lovingly. The teenager thinks he's seduced her, loves her, and is loved.

In the early morning, during disembarkment, she slips away, revealing to the audience, and then the young tearful man, that she's a "happily" married woman with a child.

Such a simple plot requires a convincing pair of actors. Sarah Pratt, presumably of English origin, had appeared in some French TV productions. She's stereotypically aloof, with calculating eyes and cynical dialogue, while the youngster, Colombia-born Gilles Guillian (then 18), looks at her with smoldering shy stares and a growing awareness of her teasing interest. Neither of them needed to do much more than express longings and lusts through their eyes, strip for full-frontal moments, and engage in measured sexual simulations. Neither of them added extra depth, or obtained bigger or better roles in the next decade (though Pratt worked for Breillat again on Une Vieille Maitresse in 2007).

The development of their one-night affair during the sea crossing is written and directed well enough by Breillat but it's too clearly a televisual exercise, a dramatic device to present women's socio-political frustrations in a male-dominated world.