The Agony of Sex Awakening in Bilitis by Samm Deighan (Bilitis, 1977, Fun City Editions)
In the 1960s, photographer David Hamilton's specific style—nude girls and young women shot in natural landscapes with a soft focus filter—were in high demand in both the art and fashion worlds. His work was particularly in vogue in the '70s, thanks in part to the sudden popularity of both softcore erotica and hardcore pornography to come in the wake of films like Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris, 1971), Deep Throat (1972), and Emmanuelle (1974). This trend allowed Hamilton to make his own film, Bilitis (1977). But Hamilton's work descends from an older tradition particularly prominent in nineteenth century art. Dozens of painters, such as Henry Mosler, William Bouguereau, Paul Legrand, John William Waterhouse and Gabriel Guay, to name just a few, depicted young women and sometimes prepubescent girls in states of undress—though mostly nude—in various natural settings. Often inspired by Greek mythology, the nymph-like women depicted in these paintings are in unmistakable states of sexual arousal, with limbs splayed and spines arched. These are not meant to be realistic painted portraits of women but fantasies geared at a largely male audience: though these works seem to imply that this is woman in her natural state: prone, naked, ecstatic and wholly passive. Scholar Bram Dijkstra writes, "What is especially striking is that, prostrate and naked, these women of nature remain intensely vulnerable. At the same time, they seem in desperate need of sexual fulfillment. We can almost hear them call to us like animals waiting to be fed." This artistic movement and Hamilton's photographs after them certainly captures disturbing, predatory sexual fantasies about young women. Hamilton's work was often subject to an "art vs. pornography" debate in the '70s, which is connected to a larger discussion about the recurring exploitation of girls and women in popular culture. But it is also valuable to view these works as more than just fantasies projected onto women. At its best, Bilitis, for example, is a nuanced depiction of women's sexual desire, their inner fantasy lives and anxieties about sexual and emotional intimacy. As his source inspiration, Hamilton turned to the writings of nineteenth century French poet Pierre Louÿs—a contemporary of many of the painters described above—who likewise focused on erotic subject matter in his work. His celebrated Les chansons de Bilitis (Songs of Bilitis, 1894) was initially framed as a series of erotic, autobiographical poems from a woman in ancient Greece—the titular Bilitis—which Louÿs discovered and translated. Though he was ultimately revealed to be the true author of these poems, they are more than just licentious fantasies. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Louÿs's depictions of women's sexuality—and lesbianism in particular—is sensitive and sympathetic. The cycle follows Bilitis from her childhood through to her sexual awakening, her relationships with other women and her later life as a courtesan, complete with melancholic realizations as she matures emotionally. Hamilton's film follows the teenage Bilitis (Patti D'Arbanville), as she comes of age in modern-day France during a holiday break from boarding school. As in Louÿs's poetry cycle, Bilitis processes her feelings by writing poems and has distressing, if necessary, realizations that the relationships she fantasizes about—such as with the older, married Melissa (Mona Kristensen) or a young photographer (Bernard Giraudeau) who pursues her aggressively—are quite different in reality. It is especially in the film's somber conclusion that it becomes more than just a male fantasy about a girl's sexual awakening. It is especially important to note that Bilitis was co-written by Catherine Breillat—a filmmaker notorious for her often graphic, taboo explorations of gender roles, sexuality and violence. Breillat herself once declared, "I take sexuality as a subject, not as an object." During the writing of Bilitis, she was a young woman on the verge of starting her career as a director. By that point, she had authored several transgressive novels—her teenage debut L'homme facile (A Man for the Asking, 1967) was banned for its graphic content—and had just co-written the film Catherine & Co. (1975). It immediately established her interest in provocative cinema about women's sexuality. Though it can be described as a sex farce and not the darker fare Breillat is known for, Catherine & Co. stars Jane Birkin as a sex worker who relocates to Paris and decides to start her own business. In 1976, Breillat directed her first film, Une vraie jeune fille (A Real Young Girl)—though it wasn't properly released until over two decades later—which presents an important contrast to Bilitis. Both films are concerned with the sexual awakenings of teenage girls. Bilitis is fairly innocent, presenting softcore scenes of lesbian heavy petting, though it does suggest repeated spousal rape and possibly a sadomasochistic relationship between Melissa and her husband Pierre (Gilles Kohler). There are several scenes where Pierre forcefully initiates sex with Melissa and one in particular where she says, "No! Not this way!" This seems to be a cut sequence of implied anal rape and it would not be a stretch to imagine that this was written by Breillat. Rape is a subject regularly explored in her films, such as in À ma sœur! (Fat Girl, 2001) where the two teenage sisters lose their virginity: one during a lengthy scene of consensual but obviously painful sex and the other when she is raped by a stranger. The innocence of Bilitis is largely absent from A Real Young Girl, which is based on one of Breillat's own novels. Like Bilitis, A Real Young Girl takes place when the protagonist Alice (Charlotte Alexandra) is on a holiday break from boarding school. In an interview, Breillat acknowledged that she has regularly explored such teenage protagonists throughout her career: "I always return to the young girl as the central figure in cinema. And to the ongoing antagonism between romanticism and desire." Unlike Bilitis, A Real Young Girl is as much concerned with disgust as it is with desire—it is far more inspired by Georges Bataille than Sappho. Alice graphically masturbates while fantasizing about being bound with barbed wire and vaginally penetrated with worms, among other disturbing scenarios. Similar to Bilitis, a man (Hiram Keller) Alice is attracted to returns her interest and pressures her to have sex but he coincidentally dies violently. As Adrienne Angelo notes, Breillat's unruly female protagonists are "exemplified by (their) vomit, urine and vaginal fluids, which signify a body whose own borders are unstable and threaten to erupt or transgress proper codes of feminine conduct." The key unifying focus of both Bilitis and A Real Young Girl is the early, chaotic stage of a girl's sexual awakening when desire is an overwhelming force, but a confusing and sometimes frightening presence. This manifests as a surreal period when memory, dreams and fantasies intrude in everyday life—bolstered by the loneliness and boredom of school vacation. The sexual desires of Bilitis and Alice are defined by fantasy more than reality. Notably, both films emphasize the often-disappointing awareness that fantasy and reality rarely align. Both conclusions include a realization that neither Bilitis nor Alice is ready for an actual, adult sexual experience. In the case of Bilitis, this includes a betrayal of sorts, when Melissa—her friend and lover—and her boyfriend Lucas succumb to their mutual attraction and have a bittersweet night of sex while Bilitis cries alone. This narrative focus on adolescent sexual fantasy is not unique to works of Catherine Breillat, however. Bilitis should be regarded alongside other French films from the '70s concerned with similar subject matter, though not all of these are erotic dramas—it was especially the purview of transgressive horror and cult movie directors at the time. But as philosopher Georges Bataille noted in his novella L'histoire de l'œil (The Story of the Eye, 1928)—itself about the transgressive sexual awakening of a young woman—"Extreme seductiveness is at the boundary of horror." An early example includes Joël Séria's Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal (Don't Deliver Us from Evil, 1971), about two schoolgirls. They bond over a shared love of transgressive literature and hatred of Christianity. During their summer break, their relationship progresses into a love affair of sorts and a crime spree that includes property destruction, a Black Mass, murder, and public suicide. Another important example can be found in the works of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, who spent most of his career living and working in France. Female sexuality was one of his central themes. His anthology film Contes immoraux (Immoral Tales, 1973) features an early sexual encounter between two teenage cousins in the French countryside and another teenage girl's masturbatory fantasies (an adaptation of the notorious erotic novel Thérèse Philosophe from 1748). La bête (The Beast, 1975) similarly focuses on the fantasies of a young woman on the eve of her wedding—she longs to lose her virginity to the young man she's betrothed to despite his awkwardness and reticence, but also has nightmares about a beast assaulting a young woman in the forest. His anthology Les héroïnes du mal (Immoral Women, 1979) explored similar territory as Immoral Tales, including another sequence of teenage sexual fantasy and masturbation (focusing on a girl's pet rabbit). The fixation on erotic content and women's sexuality was also inspired by Just Jaeckin's Emmanuelle (1974). Based on a novel of the same name by Marayat Rollet-Andriane alias Emmanuelle Arsan, a French-Thai writer, her fictionalized memoir follows the sexual awakening of a diplomat's 19-year-old wife. Emmanuelle bears some things in common with Melissa of Bilitis, who is also either in her late teens or early 20s; Emmanuelle has sexual relationships with women and extramarital affairs. The wild success of Emmanuelle, which coincided with looser restrictions around sexual content being depicted on screen, led producers to seek out more licentious fare. This resulted in multiple Emmanuelle series and spinoffs, but also hundreds of other softcore films throughout the decade pushing the limits of explicitness and transgression. While many of these films certainly represent male fantasies of young women's sexuality, it also allowed for more explicit explorations made by women themselves. This includes Catherine Breillat's emerging work, but also the collaborations between Agnès Varda and actress Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot's sensational career choices and the films of Marguerite Duras, among others. Duras is an important reference point, with her surreal, experimental screenplays, such as Hiroshima mon amour (1959), about the harrowing, brief relationship between two people traumatized by WWII; her transgressive novels, such as L'Amant (The Lover, 1984), an autobiographical novel about her teenage relationship with a much older man; and her own films as a director like India Song (1975), about the sexual awakening of an ambassador's young wife. Bilitis belongs to this larger tradition exemplified by artists like Breillat and Duras. It is undeniably an erotic film meant to titillate audiences, but it also focuses on the inner life of a young woman grappling with her sexual awakening. It ultimately portrays Bilitis's coming of age as a complicated experience marked by profound confusion, loneliness, a lack of guidance from stable adults in her life, misunderstandings about romantic relationships and fears about the physical aspect of sex. Ultimately Bilitis is shown to be justified in her anxiety that sex is rough if not violent; she craves gentleness and retreats back into her fantasy world. It shares a thesis with so many of Breillat's later films: that intimacy can represent a brutal dissolution of self and sexual awakening is a traumatic, transformative process. Samm Deighan is a Philadelphia-based writer, editor and film historian. She is the editor of Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin and co-host of the Daughters of Darkness and Evil Eye podcasts. Her latest book is The Legacy of World War II in European Arthouse Cinema.
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