Director Christophe Honoré HFP/Lagardere Photo Archive READ MORE: Louis Garrel Q&A

THE DIRECTORS: THE MOTHERFUCKER
Christophe Honoré

Paris
The Pittsburg Steamer. The Dirty Sanchez. The Parisian Appendectomy? The most notorious scene in Christophe Honoré's Ma Mère involves the movie's hero having sex with an incision in his mother's stomach. Consider the envelope sufficiently pushed. But don't count this Frenchman out just yet — he's been called the second coming of the Nouvelle Vague by some critics. Here the director discusses Catholicism and pornography — though not necessarily in the same breath.

The Sexessentials: My Mother (Ma Mère), Inside Paris (Dans Paris), Love Songs (Les Chansons d'Amour)

You have said that filming sex is an interesting exercise for the mise-en-scène — but especially in Ma Mère, you don't explicitly show the sexual act. You use sex to move the plot forward but then you often shy away from showing anything too explicit.
Indeed, there was an experiment around Ma Mère. It was from author Georges Bataille, who explored a lot the themes of death and sex together and it was very much a sexual fiction. So it was very interesting to work on that but I never had Catherine Breillat's goal of exploring the relation between pornography and mainstream cinema. For me, it is more an exploration of sensuality. I never had an intention to shock or provoke. It is more an exploration of the scene and of the frontiers that might have evolved around sexuality and homosexuality &3151; and how you can represent things in a different way from before. And the way that I see Dans Paris is much less daring. It is not focused on sexuality at all. The stakes were somewhere else.

As a director, how do you differentiate the fine line between filming a sex scene and pornography?
It's quite obvious for the director, actually. If you remain in the framework of the storytelling and you know what you are saying about your characters within the frontiers of what works with your story. As long you maintain the same loyalty to a scene that is either sexual or not at all, you know that you are not going farther. You have to intend to trigger something different in the spectator to go into pornography. It is a different intention.

Ma Mère

Probably the most controversial scene in Ma Mère involves Pierre making an incision into his mother's stomach and the sex scene that revolves around that. How difficult was it to shoot that scene and what sort of direction did you give to Isabelle Huppert and Louis Garrel?
The favorite themes of Georges Bataille are linked to death and sexuality — but now we should also talk about Catholicism. This scene is really an allegory that gives the spectator references to Catholic culture. There is a whole landscape that comes with it and it evokes a picture of Caravaggio's [painting] The Incredulity of St. Thomas. This is intended. It does not come from the book but it is very much faithful to the themes explored by the author and it something that is explicit for the spectator. Within that story, I went with the idea that the son had the necessity to see and to touch and to believe. And indeed it is very much a sexual scene in a metaphoric way. And as for as directing the actors was concerned, it was nothing extraordinary, actually, because special effects did not demand their intervention. It was all about explaining to them the meaning of the scene. So it was actually very simple.

MORE SEX ON FILM...
The Virgin: Daniel Waters
The Old Hand: Brian De Palma
The Dirty Dutchman: Paul Verhoeven
The Crossover: John Cameron Mitchell
The Punk Rebel: Larry Clark
The Big Buffalo: Vincent Gallo
The Buttoned-Up Brit: Richard Eyre
The Sophisticate: David Cronenberg
The Shocker: Gaspar Noé