Anatomie de l'Enfer/Anatomy of Hell (2004)
Related: Catherine Breillat - French cinema - 2004
Some events in this movie cannot be hinted at in a family newspaper. Objects emerge to the light of day that would distinguish target practice in a Bangkok sex show. There are moments when you wish that they would lighten up a little by bringing in the guy who bites off chicken heads.
No doubt the truth can be unpleasant, but I am not sure that unpleasantness is the same as the truth. There are scenes here where Breillat deliberately disgusts us, not because we are disgusted by the natural life functions of women, as she implies, but simply because The Woman does things that would make any reasonable Man, or Woman, for that matter, throw up. --Roger Ebert, 2004
Anatomy of Hell (2004) - Catherine Breillat [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Anatomy of Hell (2004) - Catherine Breillat [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Description
With her characteristically unflinching gaze and courage, Catherine Breillat takes her exploration of sexuality, desire and the relationship between men and women to the limit. A pure, painterly, often surreal study in sex and the body.
He doesn't like women. She will pay him to look at her, as she says, 'from the angle from which she should never be viewed'. It will cost you, he says. She says: I'll pay you. So begins Anatomie de l'enfer, based on Breillat's own novel Pornocratie. Following this post-night club encounter, the film moves to its sole location: a house in the middle of nowhere, perched on the cliffs. Over four nights, the man makes his way to this sparsely decorated house to meet this beautiful woman. If the nature of their encounter would seem to follow the formula of an erotic film, Breillat takes us far beyond such a mundane premise, as one would expect from a film maker who over ten films has explored, often with searing intensity and a relentless gaze, the relationship between men and women and the nature of female desire. While the spare interiors, the careful arrangement and framing of these bodies in space, and the enormously delicate photography make this perhaps Breillat's most composed, painterly film, Anatomie de l'enfer also takes us to the end of the road that began so directly with her first film. `This time I have decided to see it through to the end. I have decided that I couldn't go any further, that the Xth would be the conclusion of a decalogue. The X of X-rated film.' Catherine Breillat once again proves herself to be one of the most risk-taking and challenging of contemporary directors. --http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/en/film/26340.html
Sadean woman
Catherine Breillat's blatant view of sex in 'Romance' shocked many, but in 'Anatomy of Hell' her exposure of the female body to brute male scrutiny goes much further, as she tells Geoffrey Macnab. Plus http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/2004_12/breillat_interview.php, an interview with Catherine Breillat.
Catherine Breillat recently remarked of her new film Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l'enfer): "After finishing Romance I immediately felt like remaking it. It wasn't that I wanted to disown it, but I knew the subject had two sides, and this time I decided to see it through to the end." Adapted from her novel Pornocratie, Anatomy of Hell does not really function as a sequel but instead pushes some of the 1999 movie's key themes to new extremes.
The action opens in a gay nightclub. There's no dialogue, just the pounding of the music and the couples on the dance floor. A young woman (Amira Casar) is there, seemingly alone. She flees to the bathroom where she slits her wrist; a man (porn star Rocco Siffredi, who also played Paolo in Romance) tends her wound and leaves with her. He claims to be disgusted by women but agrees to her bargain: she will pay him to look at her. "Watch me where I'm unwatchable, no need to touch me. Just tell me what you see." --Geoffrey Macnab via http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/2004_12/breillat.php [Jan 2005]
Provocative filmmaker Catherine Breillat (Romance) returns with her latest and most controversial film yet! Over four nights in a house in the middle of nowhere, a woman on the verge pays a handsome stranger to watch her "where she's unwatchable." Confronting the unspeakable, discovering the unshowable, and sharing the unsharable, they learn the real secrets of how men truly see women, and how women truly see themselves. Pushing the boundaries of cinema, Anatomy of Hell will only be available in its original theatrical, unrated version. French w/ English Subtitles. --via Amazon.com
your Amazon recommendations