A filmmaker offers a role in her next movie to a crook who’s already swindled other celebrities.

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Maud wakes up one morning to find her body has turned against her. After a brain aneurism, she is now paralyzed on the left side. A filmmaker, she nevertheless decides to continue preparing for her next production, a romantic drama about a star and a crook. She discovers celebrity thief Vilko Piran and falls for his dangerous charms, offering him the lead role. Thus begins a twisted story in which she profits from his presence and he from her money.

The strength of Abus de faiblesse is in its mirroring reality with fiction, orchestrated by a directed who passes from victim to autonomous creative force. The story of Maud is also that of director Catherine Breillat, who had a stroke in 2005. She then offered Christopher Rocancourt the lead in her latest film, Bad Love, starring Naomi Campbell. In 2009, she announced the celebrity con man had swindled her as well. This film, adapted from the book of the same name, is a fascinating inside view of this bizarre story, offering a troubling portrait of a woman subjected to her own weaknesses. It is a shame, however, that the insubstantial direction doesn’t bring across the depths of the main character’s circumstances.