ANATOMY OF HELL is a brooding and vulgar scrutiny of the base nature of Human Sexuality. Catherine Breillat attempts to blend a thoughtfully philosophical film with the shocking details hardcore pornography, and falls far short of the mark. I did not have as much of a problem with the disturbing sexual images, as I did with the absurd dialogue. Nobody talks like this, and it carried the film beyond pretension and into preposterousness. The plot is straightforward, yet odd. A woman visits a gay nightclub, and attempts to slash her wrists in the toilet, however her motive is never revealed. She is rescued by a man who passed her on a stairway in the club, and later she asks the man if she may buy his time for the next several days while she reveals herself to him during her most private moments. What follows is a series of turgid and sophomoric discussions which attempt to elucidate the various differences between Men and Women. Even if these two individuals were more articulate and believable, the director does not show us why these characters are worth our attention. What enduring truths could this gay man possibly have to say about masculinity, and why should we care about the observations of this obviously troubled young woman? ANATOMY OF HELL demonstrates our animal nature as sexual beings in exacting detail, however the opaque reflections of the two central characters ring false, and deaden the overall impact of the work. Many would welcome a cinematic journey in which honest philosophical insight is injected into the very artificial and contrived genre of pornography, but ANATOMY OF HELL is neither honest nor insightful, but only salacious.
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valis194916 November 2009
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I am a great fan of Catherine Breillat. I have seen many of her films now and have enjoyed each and every one. She is an interesting film maker, always provocative, always prepared to push the boundaries of cinema. 'Anatomy of Hell' tho left me somewhat bored. It seems to me that with each new film, Breillat is becoming ever more compartmentalized. Here, her mission is to specifically explore the female sex organ and the affect this may (or may not have) on the male sexual and emotional psyche. The problem is, since she's chosen such a narrow subject (no pun intended) to examine, there really isn't enough material here to sustain an entire film ... even one with a brief running time as this (approx 80 mins).
Another downside also is that the film is totally reliant on the 2 leads, and frankly, Siffredi is just not up to the task. On the other hand, as always, Breillat casts an interesting female lead. Amira Casar, with her porcelain white skin, her voluptuous curves and her pitch black hair certainly holds ones interest. I get the feeling Breillat, when making the female casting choice, looks for younger and more glamorous versions of herself -- you'll rarely see a blonde.
There are the trademark 'pluses' of Breillat in this film tho. Her thoughtfully conceived set design for example ... her minimal editing .. sparse use of lighting. These all add up to good story telling techniques in my book. But alas, there is just not enough substance to the narrative to make this a good film.
I really do wonder where she is going to go from here ... ? -
ironhorse_iv27 April 2013Sorry, Director and writer Catherine Breillat, but this movie Anatomie De L'enfer is awful. This film shows the intellectual bankruptcy of an modern feminist. The symbolism in this art film nearly mean nothing, but a horrible movie made by a horrible and possible militantly disturbed person. Dramas like this that explore female sexuality in a clinical, bleak style and with unconventional explicitness are just self-hatred filth. This is depressing porn in my opinion. The movie opens with title cards telling us that it is a work of fiction and the lead actress had a body double. Wow, great way to ruin the film before it even started, by telling us that we're watching a movie. That would work better at the end pass the credits, not the beginning. Di This film is basically opens up with two characters, one female and one male who are complete strangers and come together to discuss and perform sex. It's too bad, the movie starts out with two random people giving each other oral sex that are not the main characters. The camera spent a few minutes on people, before moving on. We'll never see them or they will mention any more in the film past this point. There was no reason for them to be filmed. It was just a random porn scene. Anyways, we meet Amira Casar as the woman and Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi as 'the man' in a gay club. The girl is on her way to the restroom to slit her wrists with a razor blade because she's angry that none of the men are paying her any attention to her. Stupid woman, it's because they are gay. I have no clue why a gay man is representing all-men or a self-hating woman as all women. I only have a theory that she trying to get a gay guy horny for her nude body. The woman is obviously after male approval and into celebrating her womanhood; and she probably picked a homosexual to do it with because she knows that he will not become emotionally involved with her and remain nonthreatening. I also felt she wanted to be rejected by the man so she picked a gay man. She wanted confirmation on her self-loathing that she picked the man who hate her the most. The movie gives a camera shot of a clit surround by hair for a long time, follow up with a scene of Rocco as a kid trying to take care of a baby bird. The baby bird surround a nest is supposed to represent the vagina. When the baby bird dies, the boy stomp on it. Awful metaphor for his homosexuality, but interesting. What is the film trying to say? That men or gay men can't take care of children. Only women. That's deeply mistaken. I saw many fathers able to take care of their kids. Then the movie has the nerves to show child pornography. This is a no-no. I don't care if it's an art film, showing nude children is wrong! Somebody call 'To catch a Predator' on Catherine Breillat! There are lots of graphic close ups of private parts and various scenes involving a garden rake, and lipstick. Then there is the infamous scene dealing with menstruation. The movie is telling us that men are evil, because they are horrified by menstruation. First off, women hate and fear periods too. Some women are disturbed talking about semen, so does that make all women evil. No. Let's not forget urine or feces. Are people evil because they don't want to see urine or poop around? No. Let's not forget that everybody bleeds. Sorry, Catherine Breillat, you're mistaking, guys again. Ms. Breillat's only motivation by having these scenes is for shock value. The dialogue is stroppy, rigid and pretentious, with lots of references to feminine subjugation and male domination. It's actually hard to figure out what the director is trying to say in this film. The acting is passable, although I thought Siffredi was surprisingly worthy. Still, the characters are preposterous and boring. Breillat's use of tracking shots create a wonderfully dreamlike quality in the exterior scenes. The scenes of the raging ocean, in particular, are hauntingly stunning. The music is awful. The disco pop is annoying. I don't like how the movie unfairly portrays men as being lustful, violent idiots that women should throw rocks at. She also unfairly portrays women as martyrs who let themselves be victimized and revel in the dichotomy of brutal sex acts being both objects of desire and disgust. Still, I give the movie props for making me think and interpretation what she meant by the scenes. Whether the character wanted to have sex with Amira's character or not is left to be debated later. Anatomy of Hell is a hard film to watch and it's filled with images you're not likely to see anywhere else, even in pornography. The more conservative viewer should be well warned to stay away, but I think the more open-minded viewer might not like it, too. Dehumanization movies such as this have no baring for normal audience, unless you already depressed, or hateful. Unless you're curious about sex relations, or having sex issues. Don't watch.
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Anatomy Of Hell, is one of those films where the vision of its creator is so specific, that all characters and situations exist purely to illustrate the auteur's theory. You may argue that this is true of any film, but in this case, if you're not either fascinated by the filmmakers perspective or find some truth in what they are saying, you will doubtlessly dismiss this film as an obscure, academic exercise given the lack of dimension beyond Catherine Breillat's singular focus.
It's focus, specifically is the attraction/revulsion men share for the nuances of the vagina. I would say 'and female sexuality in general', but that's not really case. Over the course of four consecutive evenings a man repulsed by all things vaginal, is paid to observe a series of vaginal revelations in great detail, by woman he meets in a nightclub. His gradual acceptance of her physical dimensions causes a new 'awakening' of intimacy, that he is unable to admit to or ignore.
Interesting, but I found Catherine Breillat's perspective for want of nuance, though both sexes are presented, but I found her vision more provocative than insightful. Her decision to portray the man, for all intents-and-purposes, as a homosexual who's preference was determined not by his attraction to men, but revulsion of women, dubious and needlessly self-persecuting. -
w00f22 October 2006It's going to be very hard to write a review for this film that isn't going to be pounced on by censorship, but I'll give it a try.
Within the first five minutes of this film, a woman attempts suicide in the bathroom of a gay disco. It is, perhaps, the most cheerful moment in this bleak, drab film that takes a close-up and clinical look at women's genitalia and the men who don't love them. And apparently the women who aren't feeling too good about them either, since the reason that the "heroine" attempts to kill herself is, she says, because she's a woman.
A gay man saves her and winds up spending four nights watching her. Of course, he winds up doing more than that. At one point, he manages to lodge the handle of a large gardening tool in a rather intimate location... without waking her up. Does _anybody_ sleep that soundly? Well, maybe the audience...
In between long segments of the character "man" telling us why he's gay (although you wouldn't know it by watching this movie!) and the heroine "woman" tells us why its so hard to be her, we get some truly remarkable revelations. Ever wondered how long a woman could hold a rock inside her girlie bits or what large quantities of menstrual blood look like when smeared across the groin of a partially-aroused Frenchman? Then this is the movie for you! At one point, the heroine goes so far as to equate her reproductive opening to a vast black void, and in yet another we learn that men can give only death, and that's why gay men turn gay. Or something. You know, it's hard to follow a story when every line in the script is a veritable hyperbola of pith and the observation of humanity. Well, some seemingly quite miserable segment of humanity, anyhow.
I am, admittedly, not a devotee of French cinema. I subscribe to the stereotype that most French movies are... well... like this one. There are people in the world who take their lower regions far too seriously, and one of them has made a movie.
If you've ever wanted to kill yourself over the fact that you possess genitalia, be sure and check out this fine croissant stuffed with French cheese and a few things that IMDb won't let me mention using the names by which they're most commonly called. Mark my words, you'll never look at your crotch the same way again! -
MrMarcus4 May 2008Most people who criticise this movie are coming from two angles
They found it offensive, or They didn't 'get it'
In contrast, I simply believe that this is a bad movie. As in, the artistic decisions made by writer/director Catherine Brelliat are detrimental to the film.
First up, don't believe the hype. It's not that offensive. In fact, I've never seen a movie try so hard to be 'confronting' and 'controverial' and failing so badly. Brelliat clearly wants to shock and upset her audience, with plenty of explicit depictions of oral sex, wrist slashing and the like, but she goes overboard in this respect. The scenes are so explicit, constant and in-your-face that the audience becomes numb to them. This makes scenes like the 'lipstick' and 'hair-gel' moments come across as silly rather than shocking.
And the movie is certainly not erotic. It's full of that cold, passionless 'realistic sex' so favoured by the European art-house.
Where the movie really fails is in the plot, acting and dialogue. Brelliat casts Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi and actress Amira Cassa in the leads, but bungles this horribly by giving Siffredi all the important scenes and dialogue. We're treated to him mechanically reciting some impossibly pretentious rubbish while the more accomplished actress Cassa does little but lie down with her legs apart for most of the film. Again, this is more likely to trigger some guffaws rather than the philosophical discourse Brelliat was hoping for.
And the plot, such as it is. Our hero can overcome his homosexuality by embracing his combined love and fear of the female genitalia. Or something. The idea that homosexuals are actually repressed heterosexuals and can be 'cured' is both ridiculous and offensive. Being a hardcore feminist doesn't give Brelliat the right to spout homophobic garbage.
So, stupid plot, woeful dialogue, wooden acting, and explicit scenes so over-the-top you end up sniggering. Anatomy of Hell is a terribly wrong-headed and unintentionally hilarious film that even devotees of hardcore art-house cinema should avoid. -
trance-416 March 2005In case you were under the illusion that interaction with other people, and that any attempt to find love was a worthwhile endeavor - please see this movie - it will clear that up right away.
In case you ever thought that sex was fun, interesting or life-affirming, see this movie.
This wonderful gem of a film shows how sexuality is, in fact, not an expression of joy, love - or even hormones. Rather, sex is shown for what it truly is - a war between the sexes - best engaged in grimly, humorlessly and with an unending tirade of post-modern deconstructionist invective.
Thank you Ms. Breillat for showing me the way. Now, go play in traffic. -
mole1020011 February 2005The lead characters were not believable and the film had a feeling of fake written all over it. This was reinforced by the fact that the lead actress clearly did not share Breillat's commitment to the film, vis the vaginal scenes were done by a double and the sex scene at the end of the film was clearly faked. If you believe that an art house film such as this should have real sex, then you will be disappointed. If you believe that sex is so private and sacred that it should never be real, then you will be shocked. By the use of the double, the film ends up satisfying neither one side nor the other and ultimately calls into question why the actress took the part. To even begin to work, the film needed passion, commitment and reality from all concerned, and that was lacking.
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cherootvendors17 April 2005The synopsis of this dire art-house pic may appeal to feminists, but the film itself is sure to anger them. A woman pays a gay man to sit and study her genitals while they converse in mind-numbing, tedious sexual psychology and exchange irritating misogynistic comments. What claims to be a serious dissection of the female's relationship to her body actually comes across as an offensive waste of time, and not is not only offensive to women; homosexuals are represented here as callous woman-haters. Among the 'highlights' are Rocco Siffredi inserting a garden rake into the heroine's vagina and another scene in which he paints her bits with lipstick. Don't say you weren't warned...
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lastliberal18 December 2008This is an extremely difficult film to watch, Certainly, I appreciated seeing it alone. It is not and experience I would wish to share in a theater.
Daniel Day-Lewis may "drink your milkshake," but I doubt very much if he would partake of the woman's (Amira Casar) tea made with a used tampon, and offered to the man (Rocco Siffredi) as a means of bonding. It gives "drinking the blood of my enemies" a whole new meaning.
Catherine Breillat has certainly pushed the envelope with this film about men and women and men's hatred and fears of women. There is really nothing erotic about this film; it is provocation meant to shock and awe.
That may be what is needed in the discussion, but it certainly takes a strong person to observe and think.
The Woman hires The Man, who happens to be gay, and can therefore be more objective (?) to observe her over four nights and comment on what he finds objectionable about women. The love/hate/fear between men and women is discussed and played out in a way I have not seen before, but in such a way that it really made me think. I believe that is Breillat's objective, and she certainly achieved it.
It is not meant to be erotic, and it is not pornographic, although is ostensibly has real sex included, but is, shall we say, meant to provoke discussion. -
Critical Eye UK28 May 2005No amount of directorial rhetoric can get around the fact that this is art-house cinema at its worst, a vacuously self-indulgent piece of film-making with nothing original to say at the outset and nothing of value to show at the end of its seemingly interminable running time.
Heavy-handed (in every sense) on a gravity-defying scale, it's not so much that a great deal of the movie's content is visually ludicrous as that all of it is one long wearying and witless redundancy.
This is not an examination (in any sense) of human sexuality, rather one film-maker's parade of her own neuroses on the self-serving, if not entirely self-delusional, premise that they somehow have a universal resonance.
What rubbish -- and what blatant commercial desperation, because each increasingly deliberate attempt to shock and repel serves only to expose the movie's intellectual and artistic bankruptcy.
This isn't the sex of pornography. And it certainly isn't the sex of real life. It's the dehumanised sex of an immature vision that, shorn of its psycho-babble trappings (of which the script is insufferably replete) is likely to be entertained only by the film's author and those gullible enough to think that if something is joyless, it must be important.
One day, this director may have something worth saying that may be worth hearing. On this evidence though, the wait won't be worth enduring, not least because some female director must surely arrive in the meantime with something that explores human sexuality in a way that informs and, ye Gods, maybe even entertains (so that rules out Jane Campion as well).
Then again. . . does world cinema really need another such essay anyway? -
Chris_Docker29 August 2004This is not a film that everyone will enjoy - it is intellectually taxing, fairly low on plot, and deliberately contains sexual scenes that many people will find offensive or upsetting. In Britain and America, we assume films are made for entertainment, but tolerantly accept those that are patently art for art's sake, for the dissemination of ideas, or the questioning of commonly held views. I imagined being at the same premiere in France or Latin America - the heated debates that would follow over the gender politics, the validity of the symbolism, whether the underlying concepts were valid. In Britain, even at a film festival, we had the same old stuff about the genesis of the film, working with the actors etc (all valid enough) then a sharp split between people who obviously had a brain in their head and the men - and women - who just felt it was pretentious to waffle on when you could be making comments about the erect penis of porn star Rocco Siffredi. But before dealing with the knobs question, a brief synopsis . ..
A woman walks through a gay nightclub. She is obviously alienated - it is not clear from what - she goes to the toilets and tries to slit her wrists. A man rescues her. After a short interlude she arranges to pay this (gay) man, for four nights, to watch her, to tell her what it is that disgusts him about women. The nights and acts that fill them are accompanied by soliloquies by both the man and the woman as each states their primal sexual understanding of the other.
The dialogue is fairly heavy - it could be put alongside works of philosopher Jacques Derrida (it follows on quite nicely from his deconstructionist theories) or the more extreme ideas of Shere Hite. Much of it has great poetic beauty - aided by the fact that the two characters are purely symbolic (this according to Breillat herself) - they represent a primal man and woman, not in the context of any religious genesis, but the two first adults dealing with their sexual reactions to each other. Breillat describes herself as a 'purist' (and also heterosexual) and says she finds many of the images disturbing and that is exactly why she wished to portray them - to ask why we find images (such as a used tampon) so disgusting when they are everyday things and have no inherent 'awfulness' or reason why they should be considered shameful. But she does not just ask the question or try to shock - she counters the emotion that has been evoked, explains it (the explanation may not be to everyone's liking but it is internally consistent and academically arguable) and uses the example as one of the stepping-stones to communicate some of her ideas about sexuality.
One of Breillat's main ideas she seeks to get across in this film is that although a person 'has' an undeniable physical sex, their actual sexuality - their bodies and everything that makes them sexually attractive, is heavily involved with the meanings, ideas, fantasies or other things we attach to that body. We find a person 'sexy' because of what we think about them, what they mean to us, our understanding of them, how they make us feel, and this is projected onto the 'nice bum' aspect. Breillat says this is what distinguishes us from animals - our ability to attach meaning to sex (I hope I have quoted her accurately - not easy when working through a translator and writing the notes up some hours afterwards). We do this by means of desire, which means we project outwards what is inside. It is not automatic 'sex for reproduction and continuation of the species' - human beings have sex to satisfy our desires. The woman's body is seen in the film in ways that are normally 'unsexy' - it is the context and meaning subsequently applied which make it sexy - this is highlighted by the gay man's attitude (and meanings) that he attaches to all women.
The sex between the man and the woman in the film is not tender or loving in any usual sense of the word. The gay man has great problems coming to terms with the idea of having sex in any form with the woman, especially penetrating her (a blow job didn't seem to upset him quite so much). His ideas of disgust for the female sex are well-developed and well-articulated. She, on the other hand, can see many of the male attitudes that he displays in an extreme form in all men, and can reduce male sex drive into fairly simplistic psychological forces.
It could be argued that it is not productive to do this, that the perceived male desire to dominate, to take possession, to control, to glory in his penetrative power, are pretty base instincts that are better sublimated or reinvented. This, in fact, is what we do - but seeing them in such a raw form, not animalistically but portrayed by an articulate, self-examining man, gives us a power of knowledge, we can also argue. The theory also explains a lot of female psychology (with which Breillat says she is mostly concerned) and probably most of women's hang-ups about men. Anatomy of Hell has also been described as a companion to her earlier film, Romance, which follows a woman's quest for sexual self-knowledge and 'liberation'. But where Romance just asked questions, the woman in Anatomy of Hell has answers - and most of the things she believes are oppressive to women (the cause of women's problems) are about ill-considered, illogical, but near universal male attitudes to sex. The film is not 'anti-male' - it struck me as more about coming to terms with fundamental drives and then deciding how to handle them. In the case of the gay man, his choice is to switch off completely, not concern himself with a sex that controls him by means of its fragility, or alternately tempt him to violence and anger.
There is considerable discussion in the film about male and female psychodynamics - the male desire for 'dominance and control' for instance. It is expressed in fairly extreme form, as it might be in classical drama. (To get a handle on it, try reading Shere Hite's analysis of male-orientated definitions of sexuality.)
The whole movie is underscored with vivid photography and images. (minor spoilers follow.) When the woman is in the nightclub, she is seen against a background that totally isolates and distinguishes her from everyone else there. When she explains the female nature of the sea, how it seems so strong and masculine but is really a feminine symbol, we see the waves crashing at close quarters. Later on, when the man strolls confidently along the cliff top, we see the waves crashing far below him - something he cannot reach, and which is vaguely threatening if he looked too closely. The woman explains the symbolism of menstrual blood to him - the only blood that is spilled without the need for a wound, how it is 'purer' therefore than any blood that a man could spill. She delights in his appearance, covered in her blood, after she has had sex with him, and when he returns to the empty room where she once lay, he lifts the blood-stained sheets as if lifting on object of holiness, and his manner is devout (and the sheets also look like a shroud).
Breillat, in this cinematic illustration from her novel, has provided us with a deconstruction of the feminine mystique. She has confronted us with our prejudices, the inbuilt forces inherent in the 'battles between the sexes', she has given us two examples of human beings liberating themselves from their own disgust with their own bodies. Most of all, to cinephiles, she has made a classic that redefines French cinema at the forefront of art, justifiable breaking false boundaries set by years of censorship, (self-loathing?) and the effective ban on art to explore our deepest psyche. She has asked age-old questions but, remarkably, she has also provided her answers. Behold the work of a cinematic genius in our lifetime, treasure her integrity and devotion to her work, use this example of art to be inspired, to self-examine - or join the milling throngs calling for mind-deadening Americanised cinematic art-substitutes.
(p.s. this is the first non-mainstream film I have given a 10/10 rating to - it is simply a superlative accomplishment in its genre, accessible to anyone who applies sufficient intelligence - which rules out most critics, and a lasting contribution to the study of male-female psychology, gender politics and sexual awareness.) -
rmax30482325 May 2006As French as a baguette, or rather a bidet, the movie begins in a gay night club when one of the patrons finds a woman trying to slice her wrists in the john. After he takes her to a hospital she does for him what gay men do for one another, then offers him a fairly lucrative job. The job? Watching her where she can't be watched. And that's just the beginning.
For almost all of the rest of the film, the unnamed woman languorously lounges around nude on the bed, a naked maja, while the gay guy sits there and either looks on with disgust and insults her or strips and paws over her, slinging her pale limp limbs around as if they belonged to a no-longer-animate carcass.
She invites him to examine her body before and during her period. They share a glass of diluted menstrual blood. He outlines her nether regions in lipstick and sodomizes her while she lies blankly under him.
It's all just about as exciting as the drawings in a medical textbook. Actually, come to think of it, when I was a kid, thirty million years ago, those medical drawings were kind of entertaining. We also giggled while passing around a paperback with the titillating title, "The Layman's Legal Guide." At least two of us memorized the legal definition of "rape."
Well, that's neither here nor there. Did I mention that they have molasses-slow conversations during which neither of them smiles or laughs? They talk about things like "your disgusting obtuseness" and "your malevolent triviality." Where else but in France could you find two low-brow strangers carrying on a dialog like that. I was having dinner in a Parisian restaurant once when a fracas erupted at the next table. The maitre de apologized to me for the argument, explaining that the waiter was a Cartesian. Compare this with the similarly explicit but far less enlightening English film, "Nine Songs," where the couple have nothing to say at all.
Finally the gay guy returns for his appointed watching and finds the apartment empty except for a clump of bloodstained sheets, which he flings away in disgust.
Now, I understand that this film is -- I think I'm going to get this right -- this film is an exploration of gender issues. You see, men and women don't know each other very well. Especially men don't know women too well. Especially gay men. They don't know how to insert a tampon or anything like that, let alone how a woman thinks. I have a certain sympathy there, the problem being a real one since each person's inner organs are swimming in a sea of different hormones.
But -- well, these people aren't really supposed to be NORMAL in any way, are they? This isn't a story about a man and woman getting to know one another. It's about two fruitcakes who can't figure out what they're doing with one another.
I honestly hope that this isn't the director's idea of the relationship between the sexes -- and I mean sexes, not genders. The woman is lassitude incarnate. The guy is a revolting brutal pig. Is this supposed to illustrate the roles that men and women play in society? It's not a rhetorical question. I really don't know. Maybe you can figure it out.
The early anthropological theorist Westermarck argued that however women happen to be treated in a given culture they carried a mystery around with them, due chiefly to the fact that men simply cannot understand how or why women menstruate and have babies. Men were both envious, awed, and irritated by that mystique. Westermarck could have written this script. -
first i have to say that i have never been taken in by this talk of innate or inherent characteristics of men and women etc. i find that way of thinking to be a trap for fools. this film was very heavy on these sort of ideological constructions. almost from the first few scenes where she tells the guy in the gay club that he went downstairs just to get sucked because that's what men do etc... like all men. from there it gets worse... once the female character gets the guy to watch her she starts laying on these very thick knee jerk pseudo psychological feminist interpretations of why men feel they have to oppress vaginae etc. enough so that it was difficult to tell if it was a critique of men or just misogynist gay men. was that the point? are all men misogynist homosexuals in essence?
of course the worst element was that both characters where overwhelmed by what i call bourgeois angst. meaning that these characters sensibilities where dictated by the fact that they were well to do and had such leisure time to engage in frivolous idiotic behavior.....like ideologically constructing pseudo psychological feminist interpretations about why misogynistic gay dudes want to oppress vaginae. the fun part of the film was thinking the bourgeois gay dude totally deserved it.... like 'aha jerk'!! therein though lies the trap of this film.... i felt that the misogynistic gay dude was only that way because the film constructed it so...like a self fulfilling prophecy, which was a key element of the film.
so yes this film was aptly titled but maybe not in the way the filmmaker intended. though if this was exactly what the filmmaker was going for (i doubt it)... i would have to give some credit here maybe for a good trick to play on the audience that the filmmaker must loathe. a similar phenomena can be seen in P. Voerhovens 'the Fourth Man'..... equally nasty!! -
baudacious8 October 2005This was the first movie I saw from writer/director Catherine Breillat. I liked it so much that I also saw Romance, and A real young Girl. I'm looking forward to Fat girl, and 36 Filette which I've heard good reviews on. The DVD for Anatomy of Hell has an interview with Catherine Breillat that I thought was very interesting and I highly recommend watching it right after the movie. Anatomy of Hell focuses on a women {Amira Casar} paying a homosexual man {Rocco Siffredi} to watch her in her home during her most private moments. It contains graphic sexual material but in a learning context. The woman's character seems to want to take the shame out of being a women by showing a man {who is disgusted by women} her most feminine self. By doing so they connect on a very raw level. I enjoyed the movie. If you like Catherine Breillat's particular form of artistry you may like some of her other movies as well.
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phillamg26 August 2004No point to this "shocking" film at all! Director has just been speaking to us saying wanted to extend her previous film Romance to look at the female sex (the actual anatomy). So no motivation to make a good film then nor any desire to include any of the core ingredients to make it watchable! Instead she desperately wanted to work with Rocco again and go over one more time an exploration of women but this type anatomically. This just sounds like someone who has been dumped and needs to get back with her guy and relive the feelings again. How this series of images (I refuse to use the word 'film') ever got funded and produced is beyond me. Don't listen to the Emperors New Clothes Brigade saying it is a work of art like Baise Moi (weak film) or Irreversible (very good film) - just watch Irreversible again...
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emdoub4 May 2006Warning - spoilers herein.
The good thing about Breillat (the director and author of the book this is based upon) is that she's not at all squeamish about looking at the dark side of sexuality.
On the other hand, her view of sexuality is pretty dark. Themes in this movie include the general hatred of women that men feel and the repulsiveness of female genitalia. The main male character, at the end, feels that he's found total intimacy with a woman whose name he never learns.
Lots of nudity, male and female. Genetalia closeups, including insertion (but not intercourse). A hatchling being crushed, a group of young boys playing 'doctor' with a prepubescent girl, garden tools being used for (simulated) insertion, lots of menstrual blood, discussion of the sexual advantages of young boys over women - pretty strong stuff. The dialogue is even worse, in a way, mostly exploring the awfulness of women. If you can handle all of that, you'll get some insight into how Catherine Breillat views the relationship between the sexes. Just be prepared - that view is pretty dismal. -
John den braber26 January 2004In her latest film Catherine Breillat takes a brave step. She couples porn actor Siffredi with talented youngster Amira Casar in a controversial story about the fear of the women in her most pure form. The idea concept is fascinating, but the result obnoxious. The dialogue between the leading actors is meant to be intellectual but by trying to hard it just gets on your nerves. I never got interested in the problems that Siffredi and Casar obviously trouble and after an hour I didn't even care anymore. At it's worldpremiere at the filmfestival of Rotterdam Breillat asked the audience to vote between the highest and the absolute lowest on our ballots. I had no trouble doing this at all.
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jiffyxpop26 May 2004Okay, I don't really deserve to comment on this film, as I walked out after half an hour. Here's why:
*************SPOILERS BELOW************
In the first half hour, I was forced to watch 1) beautiful, depressed, self-hating woman slit her wrists with razor 2) fantasy image of same woman slit her throat 3) Rocco Siffredi's tumescent penis (okay, that wasn't so bad) 4) woman's mouth drip with sperm 5) image of boy throwing squashed baby bird on ground and stamping it to mush (it looked terribly real...where's PETA?!) 6) Outrageous comparison of Rocco's concept of female bits to smushed baby bird 7) full-on shot of female child displaying herself under a bush (perhaps they were made of wax to pass obscenity laws?) 8) boring scenes of woman offering to pay gay man she is obsessed with to "watch her" 9) Rocco sticking finger up said woman, then wiping her wetness on his hair (shades of Something About Mary?) 10) ridiculous pretentious French conversation about brutality and fragility 11) extended camera closeups of said woman's bush 12) VERY CLOSE close up of Rocco sticking his hand inside her...
Okay, I thought I was going to puke at this point, and I realized by this point all I probably had to look forward to was her pulling a tampon out or menstruating on him, or something involving feces, or fisting, or something like that. If the scenes had been leavened by some sort of interesting or meaningful dialogue, or was able to make me feel some sort of sympathy for the characters, it wouldn't be bad. I used to adore French films because they portrayed people, esp. lovers, realistically...running around naked, arguing, for example. Like the films by Rohmer, and that movie Betty Blue. But in the past few years I've seen Baise Moi, Irreversible, and now this -- and it's all just going downhill...schlock shock sex is all it seems to be now....If only someone would pay ME to watch it. -
StSangue2 October 2004Having seen this thing I have the desire to comment, but since I believe it was made only as a self indulgent vehicle to shock, anger, provoke, and create controversy, it's very difficult to comment without sinking to the level of the creator of this thing.
While watching it I felt two things: boredom and anger. Boredom because she shows us nothing we haven't seen before. If you want to see misogyny and Rocco's penis he's done dozens, possibly hundreds of better projects with much more interesting dialogue. I felt anger too. Yes, because I allowed myself to sink to her juvenile level for a few moments, but mostly because I was thinking, 'People are getting slaughtered in Sudan, they're drowning in the mud in Haiti. There's a world friggin AIDS epidemic. And this douche bag was given money to make this?'
What angered me even more was that I spent $9 to see it. I'm really as terrible as she is. I knew what I was going to see. -
l_harper3 December 2005To be Breillat is to be brave. The filmmakers employs techniques similar to male filmmakers in porn, but by doing so from her own female perspective, challenges such notions as bad/ good, gay/straight, clean/dirty, etc.
A suicidal woman propositions a gay man to be with her as she goes through her monthly bleeding, and exposes her body to him in an ashamed manner. The gay man soon learns much from this woman and his view of woman turns from hatred and disgust, to fear and astonishment. One could argue that he never truly hated her, since the very first scene involves him saving the woman from her own hands. When the man leaves, a very telling conversation is filmed between him and a male companion at a tavern. This is part of the enigma that Breillat has wanted to show us with Anatomy of Hell.
WHile there are scenes that are perturbing (close-ups on female anatomy, graphic sexual sodomy and depictions of menstruation) there is also great scenes of France's coastal region at night, and a raging ocean alongside rocky cliffs. There is an aesthetic that may perturb some viewers, but these tensions are merely calculated by a brilliant filmmaker wishing to comment on the reason for sexual and social difference among men and women. -
penseur29 July 2004It is too easy for "artistes" who want to be considered as such to do things that are confrontational and provocative and little else. Local examples of still "art" that made the headlines here that I can think of were "Tissues after a bowel motion" (the description is obvious) and "Virgin in a Condom" (a dashboard size figure of St Mary enclosed in a condom). This collection of moving images is pretty much in the same category. Does the writer/director of this have anything valid to say? Not really. Maybe that some men are misogynists (and some women have the same attitudes about men)? Well I think there are better ways of presenting that. At the start the woman goes into a toilet and starts slashing her wrist with a razor blade - people who do that are mentally ill. And the fantasy scene of the man of her slashing her neck with the razor blade indicates he is too. Thereafter what follows is of little surprise. In all a pretentious and unpleasant waste of celluloid, time and money.
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spydermann_209916 August 2005I was fortunate enough to attend the world premiere of this film at the 2004 Rotterdam film festival in The Netherlands. Of all the films shown, this was the one most sought after for viewing.
The Director and two stars of the film answered questions after the movie and I got to meet Rocco in person. He is taller than I would expect. Many people brought porn for him to sign.
Anyway, film was very interesting. I liked the conflict between the woman and the gay man. Both had strong convictions about life and held to their guns. Rocco did a great job showing his emotions and the sex scenes were memorable, even crude at times. It is frightening how we as an audience could relate to them though.
Amira Casar was stunning. I could not keep my eyes of her during the whole movie. And yes, she is just as beautiful in person. Overall the movie was provocative and interesting staying true to form in regards to French Cinema.
Many people asked Catherine Breillat why she would cast Rocco Sifreddi (The number one male porn star in the world) for the male lead. Her answer,"Directors look for the most beautiful women to star in their films. I cast the most attractive men!" -
I know that Breillat has a lot of big fans - personally I've only seen FAT GIRL, which I thought to be promising, but ultimately failed by what I felt to be a "tacked-on" ending that felt out of place with the rest of the film, and only seemed included to add an extra bit of shock-value to an otherwise solid film. ANATOMY OF HELL is another film that is somewhat interesting, but seems to lose itself in it's own "contemplative-ness".
A woman (Amira Casar), who obviously has severe feelings of self-loathing, meets a gay man (porn "legend" Rocco Siffredi), when Rocco enters a bathroom where the woman has just cut her wrist with a razor-blade. Rocco takes the woman to a doctor to get fixed-up, and she decides to blow Rocco on the walk home. She is apparently intrigued by his ability to bust a nut with her in this fashion, being that he's gay and all - so she pays him to come over to her place for a few nights to "display" herself for him and to have lengthy discourses about the disgust and/or awe that men feel for female genitalia. Rocco's input in said conversations comes from a somewhat unique point-of-view, as initially, he is repulsed by vaginas in general, and therefore can speak freely and honestly about the topic. But invariably, his curiosity of the organ gets the better of him, and the two begin some strange "explorations", including rock-dildo insertion, used-tampon water drinking, and vaginal rake insertion - all culminating in feelings of near-obsession on Rocco's part, and his realization of what all straight guys the world over have always known: as great as pussy is - it really is the root of all of our problems.
I applaud Breillat's willingness to tackle "touchy" subjects, and to do so on film with graphic, voyeuristic views into her character's lives - but just as with FAT GIRL - I felt that the film was a relatively interesting concept that just didn't have enough "substance" to sustain it as a full-length film. The performances were solid, and I felt that Rocco especially did a good job as the conflicted gay man who has become enthralled with the hoo-ha. But again, I don't really see what the real point of the film is, other than to state the obvious - men and women will never understand each other, and most of this is due to our conflicting views on sex and sexuality...6/10 -
'Anatomie de l'Enfer' brings to the screen a young woman hiring a gay man to watch her in her intimacy during her 'inwatchable' period. Set in a minimally furnitured house, like the Parisian apartment in 'Last tango', it tries to be the opposite of the classic movie. Where 'Tango' was sexy, 'Anatomie' is disgusting. Attaction is transformed into repulsion. Meaningful silence is treaded for meaningless speech, and while the movie tries to say a lot about the relationship between sexes, it succeeds to say very little, and it does it in many many words on screen or off-screen, but none cinematographic or raising real interest. The film is well acted and the cinematography is good, but the feeling I got after watching it was of a badly spent amount of talent with a largely boring result.