As far as I know, British viewers still aren't allowed to see Dusan Makavejev's 1974 feature Sweet Movie because of what the censors perceive as a simulated sex act between an adult woman and two underage boys.

The catch is, the lady and the lads were never in the same frame together, being photographed separately then seemingly joined through the magic of montage. In other words, the film was suppressed for something that never actually happened, not even on the let's-pretend plane.

Sex Is Comedy, Catherine Breillat's second-most-recent comedy, is predicated on a similar absurdity. Her 2001 tragedy, Fat Girl, contains a defloration scene in which a young man in his 20s appears to sport a massive stiffy. Although Breillat is no stranger to hard-core (check out Anatomy of Hell, the companion piece also now showing at the Cinémathí¨que), in Fat Girl she chose a plastic penis in lieu of the real McSchlong. Nevertheless, an international outcry arose over this dick that never was.

Jeanne, the director's on-screen alter ego in Sex Is Comedy, is played by Anne Parillaud, glamourlessly without makeup and limping along with the aid of a cane. She is shooting a movie called Intimate Scenes, a feature that is pretty much an exact paradigm of the aforementioned Fat Girl. Among the problems with which she must contend are inclement weather and two young performers who cordially loathe each other (Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin standing in for Fat Girl's Libero De Rienzo, and Roxane Mesquida reprising her role from that earlier film). He has plentiful attitude, while she has a terminal case of the pouts.

In order for the film to work, Jeanne must "seduce" each actor in turn, manipulating them into turning real-life reluctance into cinematic consent. What's more, she must do it without "mothering" them, because that's something filmmakers don't do, yet she can hardly "father" them í  la John Ford.

Breillat believes that female directors work under a handicap, and she shows us here exactly how she arrived at this conclusion. So don't be fooled by Comedy's lightness. Underneath that breezy surface lurks real content-but with a smile.