Anatomie de l'enfer

Anatomie de l'enfer

The 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.

It 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.

The 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 * and another scene in which he paints her bits with lipstick. Don't say you weren't warned...

I haven't bothered to review a film for a while as it's essentially a pointless task, but I am forced to action (as a person of action might say). WHY!?!?!? do people have a problem with sex in films. There are rumours that this film is being appealed against in Australia with the intention to ban it!! I do not find breasts offensive, not pubic hair. I certainly don't find a * offensive, or I would be forced to slice mine off... (I'm quietly admiring of Rocco's, wish mine looked more like his)... so I don't have a problem with those things being portrayed in Anatomie de L'Enfer. There are a few challenging images in the film, but what is wrong with being challenged. Indeed, how could you go into this film and be shocked, the poster let's on what you are in store for, the films rating lets you know! Why do adults have a problem with two adult characters discussing sex in a film? I thank Einstein that we have films other than the 'lets switch off our brains' U.S films (which there is a time and place for) to sometimes get our teeth into. Lets cherish Catherine Breillat and look forward to her next production; I for one would love to meet her. Cheers.

This 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.

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 *, 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 *, but ANATOMY OF HELL is neither honest nor insightful, but only salacious.

No 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 *. 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?

This movie only goes to prove that give a * flick a totally pretentious title (generally in French), throw in a whole bunch of meaningless dialogue linked by deep meaningful pauses (they make more sense than the dialogue), and voila, you have an Art-House movie right there. This cruels it for genuine, thoughtful movies addressing some of the more profound questions plaguing the human condition. It this is supposed to be some separatist feminist diatribe against all mankind, I would suggest a review by the author and director, as it indeed serves to promote the (alleged) chauvinist agenda of men. Someone should have simply picked the female lead in this film up, throw her over a convenient knee, spank her and send her to bed without any tea, while telling her to be a good girl and just get over it. At least that has the potential for a nice little BDSM * flick. As for the male "Star", the idea of a porno actor aspiring to intellectual heights is about as likely as John Holmes being considered for sainthood! The sheer pomposity of this bloated, pointless piece only serves to highlight what a waste of space the self-appointed "intellectual elite" really are. The poor dears!

Having 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 * 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.