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 Brief Crossing More at IMDbPro »Brève traversée (original title)

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18 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Catherine Breillat's best work I've seen., 30 July 2002
10/10
Author: dfs-2 from Auckland, New Zealand

I saw this at the Auckland International Film Festival this year and with so little spare time I had to really be picky and selected what I thought was the 10 best films including `Y tu mama tambien' (which received critical acclaim). Personally I thought this was the best.

This film is set on an overnight ferry trip across the English channel, it begins with a chance encounter between two lone travellers, namely a 16 year old boy Thomas and a middle aged woman Alice. Seasoned lone travellers will know that keeping company with other lone travellers is a good way to pass time. This is how their relationship develops. Thomas wants what most young men his age want, a sexual encounter. Alice on the other hand portrays herself as a sophisticated yet vulnerable woman surviving a mid life crisis. Sounds like a volatile combination right? Well you will have to see this film to the end, which has one of the best endings I can remember.

Now some notes about the cast and crew. This film introduces Gilles Grippon (Thomas) and he plays his role well, a teenager trying to be cool yet unsure of himself and impressionable. Sarah Pratt was absolutely gorgeous and stunning as Alice. She really held together those scenes sans the dialog when the couple were just exchanging glances. This film is not wholly a French language film as English is almost equally spoken throughout. Sarah has an excellent command in both. I am surprised so little is known about this beautiful and talented actress. I hope to see her in more films to come.

This is the fourth Catherine Breillat film I have seen and the best so far. Like all her other films she deals with the character's sexual intricacies but it does not have the pornographic taint of `Romance', the violence found in `A Ma Soeur!' or any of the disturbing scenes found `A Real Young Girl' (one of her early films but only recently released because it had been banned). Also well translated on screen especially with the use of lighting is the feel of being on the channel ferry. Having been on one myself it brought back memories.

I would love to own this on DVD if it ever comes out. 10/10

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12 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Just brilliant, 28 June 2004
8/10
Author: raymond-15 from Australia

These two actors (Sarah Pratt & Gilles Guillain ) previously unknown to me are just brilliant. Occupying the screen for most of the time their film characters are revealed to us through a series of conversations. Casually meeting on an overnight ferry bound for Portsmouth, Thomas a teenager and Alice a married woman exchange shy glances at first as they sit at the same table in the ship's cafeteria.

The feelings between the two grow more intimate as the night wears on. Alice finds Thomas so naive and innocent. He acknowledges he hasn't done so well at school but hopes to become a plastic surgeon because women are so concerned about their appearance and there's money in it. Alice is very critical about men in general claiming they are selfish and only have one thing in mind. She says she has just walked out on her husband.

It is interesting to watch Thomas trying to look and act older and Alice (letting down her hair ) trying to look younger. Alice is in a seductive mood and uses her womanly experience to snare him into her cabin. Shutting out the world they are now free to act without any inhibitions.

All scenes are beautifully handled by the director who is obviously devoted to detail. All scenes are believable. Alice always critical and somewhat cold seems to be constantly in control, while Thomas begins to be carried away by his emotions. To him Alice seems to be more desirable by the minute.

Finally there is the disembarkation scene. You think you know how it will all end, do you? Well think again. Life is never simple. Life can have its disappointments.

It was my intention to record this film for later viewing but I became so absorbed at the beginning I watched it right through. It is so pleasing to find a film that is so rewarding. Highly recommended.

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6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Strangers on the ferry, 26 August 2006
8/10
Author: jotix100 from New York

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Thomas, a young man on his way to England, is seen running to catch the ferry to Portsmouth. He almost misses the boat when the immigrations officer asks to see his papers, but he makes it on board. When he goes to eat, he stands behind a mysterious woman who doesn't want to have her chips with the roast beef she has ordered. She turns to Thomas to offer him her frittes, and he accepts. As fate would have it, they end up sharing the same table.Alice, who is older than Thomas, asks him to accompany him to the duty free shop thinking he can get extra liquor for her, but since he is a minor, he is refused. Thomas, who had told Alice he is 18, is in reality only 16.

They end up in the ship's disco for a drink. Alice who has about three stiff drinks suddenly becomes more talkative. The young man begins to caress her when he asks her to dance. All along Alice has told Thomas she is going home because she has broken a painful marriage. It's almost inevitable this pair would end up in bed. Thomas, who is not experienced, acts awkwardly with Alice.

As the ship is nearing Portsmouth, Thomas helps Alice with her luggage, but since he forgets his own suitcase, he runs back to get it, asking Alice to please wait for him. When he returns, she is gone. He runs after customs to try to catch with her, but he sees her in a car with a man and a small child leaving, without even looking at him!

Catherine Breillat's "Breve traversee" is a bittersweet story about a young man's awakening to sex. For being only 16, he is more sophisticated than some people in his age group. Alice, on the other hand, while acting bored at the outset, is looking forward to her night of love making because she probably has calculated this will go no further as they go in different directions. It's with sadness one sees how deeply the encounter has affected Thomas, who feels betrayed at the end.

As usual, Ms. Breillat directs the film with such an economy of details that what we see is a terse, but realistic way about how sometimes things happen. It's not always the romantic idea that Hollywood wants the viewer to see, but in many cases, like this, it's just a moment where things come together without any adornment.

Sarah Pratt, makes a cool Sarah. She is older, and wiser. Sarah sees her opportunity to have no strings attached sex with an impressionable young man she has no intentions of seeing again. Thomas, on the other hand, is nervous and awkward at first, then gains confidence and his preconceived idea is just a few minutes of sex. Gilles Guillain is good as Thomas.

Ms. Breillat tells a lot in an hour and twenty minutes!

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Its kind of a Before Sunrise meets The Graduate., 22 July 2002
10/10
Author: Shannon Mooke from Toronto, Canada

I love this film! Brève traversée [Brief Crossing] was part of the Brisbane International Film Festival, I saw 23 films and this was by far my favourite! The story focused around a young (16) boy and a 30 something woman on a ferry. The two meet in the lunch line and for lack of anywhere else to sit, they sit together. A conversation starts up that lasts them hours and away we go. The film follows their discussions & then sexual relationship. Its kind of a Before Sunrise meets The Graduate. I just loved their discussions and the glances the two share - the 2 actors are sensational, they make the film work. One quote I recall (which I rather like) said by the woman 'Alice' talking about how pointless life can be: "The irony is in order to make a living you have to spend time!" ......5 stars!

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Sarah Pratt: great acting, 9 September 2002
Author: hphenk from Heemstede, Netherlands

"Roastbeef. No chips". Something commonplace like this marks the beginning of a short relation between a woman and a young boy. A woman, who lost all her illusions about love and marriage. A young boy, attractive for the woman because he still is naive and innocent. It is especially the role played by Sarah Pratt that puts this film on a high level. Returning to the trivial roastbeef-and-chips-scène at the beginning of the film: the way Pratt argues with the waiter: "I don't want them!". That's great acting. With simple means and with only two persons that really make this film Catherine Breillat has done very good directors work. Placed in the chilly décor of a ferry boat two people attract each other and have something - something what? You can't really call it a love affair. What they do have together during the few hours of the boat trip looks tense, reliable and sometimes moving.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
A lyrical love affair, full of deep observations, 6 April 2008
9/10
Author: Chris_Docker from Scotland, United Kingdom

Have you ever thought about why you suspend disbelief for some films and not others? Or for some chat-up lines and not others? What about if it's someone you really fancy?

Half way through Brief Crossing, Alice says, "Men put you in a box and you go into it just like a goose cos you think there's nothing more beautiful than love." She and Thomas are seducing each other but there is always a resistance. For Alice, it is Thomas' lack of confidence, clumsiness and inexperience (he is sixteen going on eighteen). For Thomas, it is the inbuilt ability of any woman to say no in order to say yes. Alice, railing against men and educating Thomas at the same time, explains it: "It's exciting to disconnect them and see how they return the attack." But if Brief Crossing is a complex and intellectually fertile examination of emotion and truth-telling in the areas of romance and seduction, it is also one of Breillat's most accessible works. It is one of the few that can be enjoyed as a brief, sexy, and entirely believable romance. The quasi-philosophical banter becomes background noise. We wait, like voyeurs, for the mutual cat-and-mouse to play itself towards a passionate conclusion.

They meet on an overnight sea crossing from France to Portsmouth. Share a table in a crowded diner. She fixes him with her gaze until he stops fumbling with his food, a cigarette, anything. Eventually he has to return it or risk losing her. And we know he is attracted to her - though too shy to know what to do. While Thomas drinks only cola, she fortifies herself with several brandies. Her attentions slowly give him confidence, the 'cool' that she desires of him.

But give him too much and his confidence becomes arrogance. She has to push him away again, make him chase her. Push too far, and he will leave, humiliated.

How to make that brief meeting of minds? A union that is long enough, mutually wanted enough, for something exciting to happen? He takes her life and death references literally. She points out that she is only trying to get him to be romantic. Choosing to accept where someone else is coming from, their truth, their reality, is no more than a convenient shorthand. An arrangement from where we can proceed on common ground. An act of good faith.

Sarah Pratt (who will work with Breillat again several years later in Une Vieille Maîtresse), gives a finely nuanced performance as Alice. Especially when the ending throws new light on her whole story. But Gilles Guillain, as the young Thomas, is cringingly realistic as the hot-blooded and woefully inexperienced young lover. Volleyed between embarrassment and lust, hormones raging up a steep learning curve, it is a state that many male viewers will feel ashamed to recall.

Breillat has frequently proclaimed that she only makes films about women since, being a woman, that is all she knows about. Yet in addition to the (sometimes scathing) examination of the female psyche, she is expert in how the male gaze is experienced by the woman, and adept at extracting realistic performances from young male actors (this would be repeated in films such as A Ma Soeur and explained in Sex is Comedy).

Breillat has sometimes been likened to a female of De Sade. Not through any penchant for perversion perhaps as for her flagrant disregard for convention in being open about matters sexual. Yet in Brève Traverse, hers is similar to his literary style in another respect: she alternates fairly heavyweight discourse with elements of a more graphic nature. In some of her later films (Romance, Anatomie de l'enfer), this can become an arduous experience, especially for viewers unfamiliar with her ideas. But in Brève Traverse the intellectual content is more a gentle college lesson in seduction. With analogies on gender politics added for those that can keep up at the back. All delivered with the silver tongue of a woman out to get her man.

I used to think 'truth' was in the ears of the beholder. "Is this glass empty?" – well it depends whether I am standing in a bar or a physics laboratory. But Breillat is helping persuade me it is only at the discretion of the beholder. Would you agree? And what if you happen to be on your second brandy; the stars a canopy and the sea below; if our pheromones are intertwine; and nothing we say now will matter at the end of the crossing? Will your answer be the same?

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
A Crossing from Innocence to Awareness, 3 January 2008
8/10
Author: Subhamoy Sengupta from kolkata, India

After watching "Romance" and "The Anatomy of Hell", I felt like I had reason enough to believe, Catherine Breillat prioritizes sex and depressing visuals so much, the subtle things she tries to prove take backseat. But after watching Brief Crossing, my conception underwent a drastic polarity shift.

Thomas is a 16 year old seemingly typical French boy. Alice is probably British, and is around 30. Looks like she had a lot of dimensions to her that she lost from a years long slow heartbreak. Thomas thinks the usual social institutions like boyfriend-girlfriend relationships can't inhibit the French from satisfying their carnal needs any longer. Seems like he does not readily realize the gravity of what he says.

Sometimes, when a child is born in a battlefield and brought up in the neighbourhood, he looks at wars with the eyes of an innocent. He sees deaths, but does not realize what it is that seems so obvious like the sun and the moon. One day, a bullet hits him and the next moment, he is not innocent any more. Brief crossing is one such crossing. Crossing from sight to comprehension. Crossing from ideas of pain to pain itself. Crossing from Innocence to Awareness.

Brief Crossing, like a few others of its kind like "The Man from Earth" or "Broken English", depends solely on a few people's expressions. Not even an extra penny has been spent on refining anything that is not totally essential to help the movie reach its end. Of course it's not for everyone to watch. But those who like it once, will not forget it ere long.

Not recommended for general viewers or cinegoers. Highly recommended for "those" few.

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Pornographic?, 6 April 2003
9/10
Author: Sebastian-20 from Netherlands

I've never seen a Catherine Breillat movie until this one was broadcasted. People tend to say that what she makes is pornographic, but it is so much more than that. Even during the sex-scene's there's a lot of talking going on. Sarah Pratt as Alice reminds me of Isabelle Huppert, a bit cold and distant, but she and Gilles Guillain did a great job in acting. Overall a very good movie shot on a low budget!

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5 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Two ships passing in the night, 15 January 2005
6/10
Author: George Parker from Orange County, CA USA

"Brief Crossing" is all about a 30 something woman and a 16 year old boy who meet during a ferry journey across the English channel. As the ferry takes us from La Havre to Portsmouth, the characters meet, shop, drink, dance, have sex, and ultimately part at their destination. Superficially, "Brief Crossing" is not much of a film. It has marginal production value, a cast of two, and a meager story. However, as a relationship film it is finely nuanced with a very natural ebb and flow of conversation, body language, evinced emotion, and human interaction. Not for everyone, this worthy addition to auteur Breillat's resume will be most appreciated by French film devotees. (B-)

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One word Masterpiece, 3 November 2011
Author: Jay Raskin from Orlando, United States

Why is it in the twilight of cinema only the French can produce masterpieces? This is the first Catherine Breillat movie that I've seen. I'll be on the lookout for them from now on. This ranks with the masterpieces of the French cinema. It is Truffaut (youthful innocence), Godard(ballet of camera movement with independent activities in foreground and background and Blier (absurdity, realism and sex) all rolled together. This is the human spirit revealed. It is erotic, at least it is a study in erotic passion, but it is as far from pornography as film gets. Sarah Pratt's acting is superb. I hope she won a caesar for this.

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