France Can’t See What’s Erotic About Two Women Falling For Each Other

This is the weirdest possible sentence to write, but director Céline Sciamma says that Portrait of a Lady on Fire isn’t considered erotic in, of all places, France. What? WHAT? Quoi?? Sciamma: “It’s a very bourgeois industry. There’s resistance to radicalism, and also less youth in charge. ‘A film can be feminist?’ They don’t know this concept. They don’t read the book. They don’t even know about the fact that ‘male gaze’ exists. You can tell it’s a country where there’s a lot of sexism, and a strong culture of patriarchy.” – The Guardian (UK)