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Exterminating Angels director Jean-Claude Brisseau
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Mar 9, 2007
The story behind what inspired Jean-Claude Brisseau’s new film, Exterminating Angels, is nearly as fascinating as the film itself. During the preproduction of his last film, Secret Things, Brisseau was accused of sexual harassment by four actresses and he ended up paying some fines. Brisseau has taken that experience and turned just part of it into the fascinating and erotic Exterminating Angels. The main character in the film is a director who wants to explore women’s sexuality on film and he finds three very sexually open women. The women appear unflappable until their erotic adventures release some very raw emotions.
Check out the official website for Exterminating Angels
Daniel Robert Epstein: What is interesting about this is that I knew nothing about you personally before I saw the movie, what made you want to do something semi-autobiographical?
Jean-Claude Brisseau: I do the same thing in all of my films. In the whole body of my work, I use things that I myself have experienced but are not necessarily autobiographical. In one of my other films, Sound and Fury, the topic I deal with is juvenile delinquency. It’s based on characters that I’ve known and I wrote a fictional story around them. In both Sound and Fury and Exterminating Angels, basically what I’m doing is taboos. In the first, the taboo of delinquency and in the second, the taboo of sex. In both cases I wrote about things I felt I knew about. I know that the critics have made it to be autobiographical but the film director, like the teacher in Sound and Fury, are only about 30 percent me. The other 70 percent is not me and what I’ve done is I’ve based them on people that I’ve known and I’ve tried to create composite characters who can really represent several people and then put them in a situation that I may or may not have experienced myself.
DRE:
For the most part, French films that have sex in them and make it over to the US, the sex isn’t usually meant to titillate the audience. The sex in this film seems very much to titillate the audience the way it was titillating the director in the film.
JCB:
There are really two reasons why I made this film. In my previous film, Secret Things, what I was trying to do was to see how the emotion of sex could be used to create suspense. In the same way that [Alfred] Hitchcock used suspense to create fear in the audience. For example, in Psycho we see the old lady killing somebody. So we know the old lady is capable of killing somebody. Then suddenly someone appears on the staircase and is coming up the staircase and we’re wondering if the old lady is up there and will something happen. With Exterminating Angels I’m showing two women who the audience already knows are ready to do anything and I’m trying to see how far I can take them. At the restaurant, the girl is sitting at the table and you’re not quite sure how far she is going to go. But you already know in your mind that these are women who are willing to take the risk and go further. You’re disturbed because you’re not really sure what she’s going to do. So, in effect, I do try to subvert the audience in that way, to get them to be disturbed by what they’re seeing. I also tried to show that the emotion of sex could be linked with elements that are comic, with elements that are dramatic, with elements that are fantastic or surrealistic. What I really set out to do was to make an experimental film, which would cause a reaction on the spectators. The director, Catherine Breillat, asked me if I would act in one of her films but I would not. She was not concerned about causing this disturbing feeling in spectators but I am. I am interested in creating that response. If look at thrillers now, say Scorsese’s work, what you see is systematic sadism. People with their hands cut off, their arms cut off, people are being killed, people are killing each other and yet this doesn’t shock the viewer. So why is it that that kind of sadism or masochism doesn’t shock the viewer but when the emotion of sex is portrayed on the scene it creates shock. If you have a woman who gives herself sexual pleasure or if she finds sexual pleasure in a couple then maybe down the road she’s going to experience the kind of suffering that is normal in relationships. But it is still the emotion of sex that shocks.
DRE:
I think most of the female characters in this movie had never done sex acts like this before until they met the director. What was the director looking for with these women?
JCB:
In this particular character, he finds that there is a relationship between sexual pleasure and the prohibited. Based on what I experienced here I became curious about that relationship. The director is compelled to find an answer. He’s looking for women who are also interested in finding that link. Now, whether or not they ever did any of this before, maybe they did because they may be lying in some cases, but the character in the film is trying to show his observations on life and his desire to make the film.
DRE:
You said that the director is 30 percent of you. Many people are going to think he’s quite a bit more. Is making the film a way of thumbing your nose at people that think that?
JCB:
If they think it is an autobiographical film they’re dead wrong. The actor playing the director adopted some of the characteristics I have such as wearing a shirt with a pocket. In his office in the film there are two posters of Gary Cooper movies. I like Gary Cooper movies. My wife is the editor on this film and the set designer so she put those posters there. But it’s only those superficial elements that are reminiscent of me. People are going to look for that autobiographical element. It wasn’t done quite so much in Sound and Fury because it was played by a woman. What the director does have that is in common with me is the desire to understand life in general and human beings on a sexual level. For example, in Sound and Fury, I was interested in the philosophy behind delinquency. What makes people delinquent when these are qualities that all of us may carry? What makes certain people act on them? The other thing that is me is when the character states “To do something like this has never been done before in a film.” The desire to understand basically is me, but the behavior of the director is not me. It’s not a documentary and it seems that it’s almost more similar to something like a Greek tragedy with Oedipus as a good example.
DRE:
SuicideGirls has many women posing nude and members of the site can interact with the women. Sometimes it seems like these members forget that these are real people and they look at them as just sexual objects. Does something like that pertain to Exterminating Angels?
JCB:
One thing I did in this film is that there is no explanation of what happened in these characters’ pasts. But what you do see is that the director doesn’t see what kind of reactions his behavior is able to provoke. So, in a sense he is not really treating them as sexual objects because if you remember the scene where the girl gets hysterical he goes and helps her right away. He helps her because he feels for her as a human being. One of the problems if you look at somebody as a sexual object or look at it in the way it’s done in a porno film, it eliminates the other aspects of them as human beings so they become only a sexual object and nothing else. It’s a way of escaping from the prohibitive. What I’m really concerned with is looking at real people like you and me and seeing how we deal with the issue of pleasure versus prohibition. You can have somebody who happy and suffering at the same time, so this is one of the things that I’ve been trying to explore.
DRE:
Are you working on anything right now?
JCB:
Yes, I am working on two different films. One is a shorter film and I’m really toying with the idea of working without a professional crew and all the professional equipment. I’m also not working on a consecutive basis, not working one week following another week, but doing it on a more experimental level. The other film is a much more institutional type of film. It’s a melodrama which will be a rather expensive film to make and in a sense it’s a combination of a melodrama, a thriller and a police procedural.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
The story behind what inspired Jean-Claude Brisseau’s new film, Exterminating Angels, is nearly as fascinating as the film itself. During the preproduction of his last film, Secret Things, Brisseau was accused of sexual harassment by four actresses and he ended up paying some fines. Brisseau has taken that experience and turned just part of it into the fascinating and erotic Exterminating Angels. The main character in the film is a director who wants to explore women’s sexuality on film and he finds three very sexually open women. The women appear unflappable until their erotic adventures release some very raw emotions.
Check out the official website for Exterminating Angels
Daniel Robert Epstein: What is interesting about this is that I knew nothing about you personally before I saw the movie, what made you want to do something semi-autobiographical?
Jean-Claude Brisseau: I do the same thing in all of my films. In the whole body of my work, I use things that I myself have experienced but are not necessarily autobiographical. In one of my other films, Sound and Fury, the topic I deal with is juvenile delinquency. It’s based on characters that I’ve known and I wrote a fictional story around them. In both Sound and Fury and Exterminating Angels, basically what I’m doing is taboos. In the first, the taboo of delinquency and in the second, the taboo of sex. In both cases I wrote about things I felt I knew about. I know that the critics have made it to be autobiographical but the film director, like the teacher in Sound and Fury, are only about 30 percent me. The other 70 percent is not me and what I’ve done is I’ve based them on people that I’ve known and I’ve tried to create composite characters who can really represent several people and then put them in a situation that I may or may not have experienced myself.
DRE:
For the most part, French films that have sex in them and make it over to the US, the sex isn’t usually meant to titillate the audience. The sex in this film seems very much to titillate the audience the way it was titillating the director in the film.
JCB:
There are really two reasons why I made this film. In my previous film, Secret Things, what I was trying to do was to see how the emotion of sex could be used to create suspense. In the same way that [Alfred] Hitchcock used suspense to create fear in the audience. For example, in Psycho we see the old lady killing somebody. So we know the old lady is capable of killing somebody. Then suddenly someone appears on the staircase and is coming up the staircase and we’re wondering if the old lady is up there and will something happen. With Exterminating Angels I’m showing two women who the audience already knows are ready to do anything and I’m trying to see how far I can take them. At the restaurant, the girl is sitting at the table and you’re not quite sure how far she is going to go. But you already know in your mind that these are women who are willing to take the risk and go further. You’re disturbed because you’re not really sure what she’s going to do. So, in effect, I do try to subvert the audience in that way, to get them to be disturbed by what they’re seeing. I also tried to show that the emotion of sex could be linked with elements that are comic, with elements that are dramatic, with elements that are fantastic or surrealistic. What I really set out to do was to make an experimental film, which would cause a reaction on the spectators. The director, Catherine Breillat, asked me if I would act in one of her films but I would not. She was not concerned about causing this disturbing feeling in spectators but I am. I am interested in creating that response. If look at thrillers now, say Scorsese’s work, what you see is systematic sadism. People with their hands cut off, their arms cut off, people are being killed, people are killing each other and yet this doesn’t shock the viewer. So why is it that that kind of sadism or masochism doesn’t shock the viewer but when the emotion of sex is portrayed on the scene it creates shock. If you have a woman who gives herself sexual pleasure or if she finds sexual pleasure in a couple then maybe down the road she’s going to experience the kind of suffering that is normal in relationships. But it is still the emotion of sex that shocks.
DRE:
I think most of the female characters in this movie had never done sex acts like this before until they met the director. What was the director looking for with these women?
JCB:
In this particular character, he finds that there is a relationship between sexual pleasure and the prohibited. Based on what I experienced here I became curious about that relationship. The director is compelled to find an answer. He’s looking for women who are also interested in finding that link. Now, whether or not they ever did any of this before, maybe they did because they may be lying in some cases, but the character in the film is trying to show his observations on life and his desire to make the film.
DRE:
You said that the director is 30 percent of you. Many people are going to think he’s quite a bit more. Is making the film a way of thumbing your nose at people that think that?
JCB:
If they think it is an autobiographical film they’re dead wrong. The actor playing the director adopted some of the characteristics I have such as wearing a shirt with a pocket. In his office in the film there are two posters of Gary Cooper movies. I like Gary Cooper movies. My wife is the editor on this film and the set designer so she put those posters there. But it’s only those superficial elements that are reminiscent of me. People are going to look for that autobiographical element. It wasn’t done quite so much in Sound and Fury because it was played by a woman. What the director does have that is in common with me is the desire to understand life in general and human beings on a sexual level. For example, in Sound and Fury, I was interested in the philosophy behind delinquency. What makes people delinquent when these are qualities that all of us may carry? What makes certain people act on them? The other thing that is me is when the character states “To do something like this has never been done before in a film.” The desire to understand basically is me, but the behavior of the director is not me. It’s not a documentary and it seems that it’s almost more similar to something like a Greek tragedy with Oedipus as a good example.
DRE:
SuicideGirls has many women posing nude and members of the site can interact with the women. Sometimes it seems like these members forget that these are real people and they look at them as just sexual objects. Does something like that pertain to Exterminating Angels?
JCB:
One thing I did in this film is that there is no explanation of what happened in these characters’ pasts. But what you do see is that the director doesn’t see what kind of reactions his behavior is able to provoke. So, in a sense he is not really treating them as sexual objects because if you remember the scene where the girl gets hysterical he goes and helps her right away. He helps her because he feels for her as a human being. One of the problems if you look at somebody as a sexual object or look at it in the way it’s done in a porno film, it eliminates the other aspects of them as human beings so they become only a sexual object and nothing else. It’s a way of escaping from the prohibitive. What I’m really concerned with is looking at real people like you and me and seeing how we deal with the issue of pleasure versus prohibition. You can have somebody who happy and suffering at the same time, so this is one of the things that I’ve been trying to explore.
DRE:
Are you working on anything right now?
JCB:
Yes, I am working on two different films. One is a shorter film and I’m really toying with the idea of working without a professional crew and all the professional equipment. I’m also not working on a consecutive basis, not working one week following another week, but doing it on a more experimental level. The other film is a much more institutional type of film. It’s a melodrama which will be a rather expensive film to make and in a sense it’s a combination of a melodrama, a thriller and a police procedural.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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