Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Bad News, Bad Love

I suppose we should have known better, but Catherine Breillat's planned remake of her own Parfait amour! in English with Naomi Campbell has been scrapped. According to several news sources, Bad Love's cancellation has everything to do with Breillat's choice to cast infamous con artist Christophe Rocancourt in the male lead. As they say, once a thief... Rocancourt reportedly scammed Breillat out of around 650.000€, and the project is now dead. Though this source reports that Breillat will release a (likely scathing and exquisitely written) book entitled Rocancourt et moi about her wretched experience with him (Wikipedia claims the book will be called Abus de faiblesse).

Thankfully, Breillat has lined up her next project, funded by French television, with a modern adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, continuing to stray from using her own writings as source material, after The Last Mistress [Une vieille maîtresse] from Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly and Bluebeard [Barbe Bleue] from Charles Perrault, the man also responsible for Sleeping Beauty. The Sleeping Beauty project appears to be part of a series of films updating classic contes de fées. According to Toutlecine.com, filmmakers Jacques Doillon (Ponette, Le premier venu) and Marina de Van (Dans ma peau, Ne te retourne pas) are rumored to also be contributing to the series. Sounds compelling, but can I hope then that Breillat casts Campbell as belle au bois dormant? We'll see...

All of the links, except for Breillat's Wikipedia page, are in French, but you can read Rocancourt's Wikipedia page for details in English.