French director Catherine Breillat suffered a partly paralyzing cerebral hemorrhage in 2004; afterward, she struck up a friendship with a celebrated con man, who eventually bilked her out of a lot of money.
In “Abuse of Weakness,” Breillat, notorious for her sexually explicit films, casts the excellent Isabelle Huppert as her avatar, Maud, to tell the tale.
Waking up one morning in terror, her arm crabbed at her side, the filmmaker cries, “Half of my body is dead!” Her accident leaves her struggling to speak and walking lopsidedly with a cane. It also seems to bring out her urge to flirt with danger — a not incomprehensible reaction to a brush with death, or at least major paralysis.
After seeing con man Vilko Piran (Kool Shen) on a news show, Maud, a very cool customer, decides to cast him in her new movie. He’s the real deal, she tells her wary assistant (Christophe Sermet).
And, indeed, he is: Soon Vilko’s hitting her up for large amounts of cash, which she somewhat inexplicably provides with hardly any hesitation.
The plot, though never less than engaging, occasionally tests believability — until you remember it’s drawn from Breillat’s life.