Abus de faiblesse

Catherine Breillat : 2013
Abuse of Weakness

In 2004, the iconoclastic French filmmaker Catherine Breillat suffered a stroke that paralysed the left side of her body. Three years later, she met the infamous con man Christophe Rocancourt and offered him a lead role in a film she was developing, as well as 25,000 euros to write a script. Over the subsequent eighteen months, she wrote him various cheques totalling a further 678,000 euros, money that she would never see again. In 2009, Breillat wrote a book entitled Abus de faiblesse – abuse of weakness, a term used in the French legal system – that dealt with her experience. Last year, Rocancourt was found guilty under exactly this law of taking Breillat's money, and was sentenced to sixteen months in prison. In her film she settles things with herself through a fictional account that is not biographical, but rather recounts what she went through, allowing the spectator to decide which of the two is in control in this complex relationship. The film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2013.