Abuse of Weakness

Abuse of Weakness (French: Abus de faiblesse) is a 2013 semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Catherine Breillat. The film had its world premiere on 6 September 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival.^[3] In the United States, the film was acquired by Strand Releasing and given a release in December 2014.^[4]

Abuse of Weakness
Theatrical release poster
French	Abus de faiblesse
Directed by	Catherine Breillat
Screenplay by	Catherine Breillat
Based on	Abuse of Weakness by Catherine Breillat
Produced by	Jean-François Lepetit
Starring	Isabelle Huppert Kool Shen
Cinematography	Alain Marcoen
Edited by	Pascal Chavance
Music by	Didier Lockwood
Production companies	Flach Film Iris Films Arte France Cinéma CB Films uMedia
Distributed by	Rézo Films (France) Les Films de l'Elysée (Belgium)
Release dates	6 September 2013 (2013-09-06) (TIFF) 12 February 2014 (2014-02-12) (France) 19 March 2014 (2014-03-19) (Belgium) 1 December 2016 (2016-12-01) (Germany)
Running time	105 minutes
Countries	France Germany Belgium
Language	French
Budget	€4 million[1]
Box office	$171,660[2]

Plot

Maud Shainberg suffers a cerebral hemorrhage that leaves her paralysed on one half of her body. After a year of intense therapy Maud, a director, begins to work on a new project. After seeing an interview with a con man, Vilko Piran, she immediately asks him to star as the lead in her film, about a lower-class man who falls in love with a famous actress, eventually beating her to death. Vilko accepts but insists that he see Maud as much as possible before filming begins.

Cast

• Isabelle Huppert as Maud Schoenberg
• Kool Shen as Vilko Piran
• Laurence Ursino as Andy
• Christophe Sermet as Ezzé
• Ronald Leclercq as Gino
• Fred Lebelge as TV presenter
• Tristan Schotte as Antoine
• Daphné Baiwir as Hortense
• Dimitri Tomsej as Louis
• Nicolas Steil as Louis' father
• Jean-François Lepetit as Jean-Paul

Production

In 2007, Breillat met notorious conman Christophe Rocancourt, and offered him a leading role in a film that she was planning to make, based on her own novel Bad Love, and starring Naomi Campbell.^[5] Soon after, she gave him €25,000 to write a screenplay titled La vie amoureuse de Christophe Rocancourt (The Love Life of Christophe Rocancourt), and over the next year and a half, would give him loans totalling an additional €678,000.^[6] In 2009, a book written by Breillat was published, in which she alleged that Rocancourt had taken advantage of her diminished mental capacity, as she was still recovering from her stroke.^[7] The book was entitled Abus de faiblesse, a French legal term usually translated as "abuse of weakness" and was the basis for the movie of the same title.^[8]

Reception

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 85%, based on 34 reviews, with an average score of 6.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Abuse of Weakness' fact-based plot proves that truth can be stranger than fiction – and provide grist for compelling character studies."^[9] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 77, based on 16 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[10]