A beautiful young woman decides to change course in her life after several philosophical conversations with a taxi driver. She loses her boyfriend, picks up a psychiatrist in a bar and ends up in a sexual experiment that gets out of hand, looking for the ultimate orgasm.
Once again Brisseau, Rotterdam’s Film Maker in Focus in 2003, looks at the sexual voyage of discovery of young women. Brisseau shows people who leave the established order and confront dominant morality looking for personal liberation, especially in the field of sex. This is portrayed fairly explicitly by Brisseau.
In À l’aventure, the slender beauty Sandrine feels locked up in the everyday conventions of her life, despite social success. As a result of several conversations in the park with her philosophically inclined taxi driver – and partly thanks to an inheritance – she decides to take a radical sabbatical. Her new and unashamed honesty immediately costs her relationship: her boyfriend is stunned when she confesses to having a vibrator. She strikes up a conversation with a psychiatrist at a bar and asks about the psychoanalysis he’s reading about in his book. It is the start of a boundless and increasingly dangerous experiment in which she, the man and two other women use hypnosis and regression to search for the ultimate orgasm. Sandrine watches a sadomasochistic game and sees a woman in mystical erotic ecstasy make contact with a previous life as a fourteenth-century nun. It’s the man who puts their own attitude and that of the film into words: ‘My love for truth is stronger than any morality.’ –IFFR
Jean-Claude Brisseau (born 17 July 1944) is a French filmmaker best known for his 2002 film Secret Things (“Choses Secrètes”) and his 2006 film The Exterminating Angels (“Les Anges exterminateurs”).
In 2002 he was arrested on charges of harassment, fined and given a suspended one-year prison sentence. The plaintiffs were three women who had performed sex acts in front of him during their auditions. This was to form the basis of the The Exterminating Angels film.
He was formerly a professor at La Femis (Paris). His film Céline was nominated for the Golden Bear Award at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival. At the Cannes Film Festival, he was awarded the France Culture Award in 2003 for Secret Things; in 1988 he was awarded the Special Award for the Youth. —Wikipedia
C'est un croisement entre la veine mystique de Brisseau - Céline, L'ange noir - et sa veine recherche désespérée du plaisir sexuel féminin - ses derniers films. Brisseau filme ça avec une naïveté salvatrice, aucun second degré, et une croyance en le cinéma qui force l'admiration. Il y mêle une reflexion scientifique sur la création de notre monde et sa possible fin qui partout ailleurs paraîtrait cliché et digne d'un devoir de physique de seconde mais qui ici est bouleversante, notammant parce qu'il la met dans la bouche d'Etienne Chicot, formidable, et surtout car ce discours il le transforme en pensée cinématographique. Son film n'est jamais un film discurssif, c'est un film qui traîte le discours comme acte cinématographique. Peu de séquences dans le film, des blocs de temps forts, et un retour au cinéma de la Nouvelle Vague en le sens où il contient le cinéma Hollywoodien mais il en propose un au-delà, via la mise en scène, la photographie et le montage. Le film m'a beaucoup rappelé le cinéma de Rohmer et celui de Oliveira. Les actrices y sont sublimes, à commencer par l'héroïne, Carole Brana, qui est une vraie révélation, sublime actrice, et d'une beauté sidérante, gaulogène d'or 2009 haut la main. C'est un film d'une étrangeté telle, qui vire sur sa fin au mysticisme le plus total, qui fait qu'aujourd'hui plus rien ne ressemble à ce cinéma-là, qui est pour moi l'essence même de l'art cinématographique ! Bon, sinon, pour déconner, on peut dire qu'"à l'aventure" c'est Rohmer qui se pelote les nichons ou de Oliveira qui se pommade le kiwi
