Bearded in his own den

Here’s Dominique Thomas and Ella Creton in Catherine Breillat’s ima­gin­at­ive, pro­voc­at­ive, shock­ing, and hil­ari­ous adapt­a­tion of Perrault’s fairy tale, Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard). I caught it at the New York Film Festival and think it a stone mas­ter­piece, a film Breillat was abso­lutely born to make. (I remem­ber the pro­du­cer Jeremy Thomas once ask­ing me, “Don’t you want to see David Cronenberg make a film of Ballard’s Crash?” and reply­ing, “Oh yes, please;” I can ima­gine giv­ing a sim­il­ar response had someone asked me about want­ing to see a Breillat Bluebeard. Sometimes dreams DO come true!) The pic­ture’s being released in the U.S. by Strand some time next year, the soon­er the bet­ter as far as I’m con­cerned. I spoke with Breillat, always one of my favor­ite inter­view sub­jects, about the film when she was in New York earli­er this month, and she was fas­cin­at­ing and fierce as always. Here is the inter­view, cour­tesy of The Auteurs’.