The Cinematheque

Imported 35mm Print

“A hypnotic, unsettling work by one of the most sensuous filmmakers of the last 25 years … This initially castigated movie fits in with the tantamount themes that have dominated Denis’s work since Beau travail: madness, desire, and power.”

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

Claire Denis’s polarizing erotic shocker, a tale of devouring sexual desire, scandalized Cannes and stands as a defining work of the transgressive New French Extremity movement. The Brown Bunny​’s Vincent Gallo and Betty Blue​’s Béatrice Dalle star as unfortunates afflicted with a condition that turns sexual hunger into, literally, hunger for flesh. He’s an American honeymooning in Paris. She’s a Frenchwoman married to a doctor. Denis’s freak-out movie, an outré meeting of art film and splatter film, is named after a song from Frank Zappa’s album Freak Out! The cinematography is by Agnès Godard and the score by British chamber pop band Tindersticks; both are regular Denis collaborators. Print courtesy of Institut Français, thanks to the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York.