Catherine Breillat’s elegant, witty and unsettling film offers a provocative study of burgeoning female sexuality and male desire.

In the dual narrative of Breillat’s version of Perrault’s fairy tale, a young girl reads to her more timid sister the story of two slightly older sisters who, centuries ago, were orphaned and left without dowries; the older let herself be married off to a wealthy, considerably older lord with a murderously ogre-ish reputation. Elegant, witty and frequently unsettling, the film offers a partly autobiographical, characteristically provocative study of burgeoning female sexuality and male desire.

Plus Barbe bleu (France 1901. Dir Georges Méliès. c9min. With live piano accompaniment) Admittedly rather less Gothic in style, but still a delightfully imaginative account of the same sinister tale. 

January 14th and 18th