Imdbidia A very confronting feminist French independent movie by the always provocative Catherine Breillat, based on her own book Pornocratie.It tells the story of the meetings that a straight suicidal woman and a guy man (paid by her) have during four nights in an isolated house by the beach. When she hires him, she says, watch me where and the way I'm not be watched, no need to touch, just say what you see. She's just playing a trick on him, as the following nights will prove that she wants him to touch her. The male character will be progressively intrigued and emotionally confused by her conversations and interaction with the woman. The woman not only offers her body to be watched, to be touched and used in any way, but also offers lecturing monologues on female sexuality and anatomy. She tries to understand why guy men reject the female body, and also why patriarchal societies and the male psychology have always reacted to the female body (and to women) by incarcerating it, subjugating it, demonizing it, considering impure and worth of repulsion, but also acceptable as an object of pleasure for men, and, because of it, obscene. The movie, it could be said, is a rejection of religious morality on women and the female body, and patriarchal societies.The movie has some reminiscences of The Last Tango in Paris, although with reverse roles. The story happens in an empty house, in a confined room, one of them marks the rules (in this case the woman), they don't mention their names, and they explore their sexuality outside any social constriction. However, there is no lightness or warmth in this movie, as most of it is set at night-time, and the atmosphere is always uninviting and artificial, with the predominance of greenish lights and run-out colors.As in other Breillat's movies, the dialogs are the core of the movie and not the flesh we see in it. This is one of Breillat's merits, to transcend sexuality and speak of deeper themes while focusing on naked bodies having sex. The dialogs are always so through provoking, so deep and philosophical, that you have to give her credit for that.However, unlike Romance, Breillat does not succeed in mixing the explicitly sexual content with the points she wants to make in an engaging way. I thought that a couple, fully dressed, with enough dramatic expertise, and the same dialogs, would have been able to transmit the same message, even better because the viewer could have focused on the dialogs. Even if you like philosophy and you are interested in unsimulated sex scenes, you still feel that the settings are dull. When the movie is not dull is truly confronting and repulsive, very hard to watch. The sex scenes won't make anybody horny, as they are full of atavistic feelings, even animalistic in a way, and you don't feel that the characters get any pleasure out of it. I found very disturbing the scene with the small injured bird, all the ones involving menstruation, the vaginal hairy shots, and the rake scene, which are all very symbolic but confronting nonetheless.On the other hand, I don't think the viewer can understand why the male character has to be gay and not straight, and why Breillat assumes that gays reject women because they are repulsed by them in any way. Anybody who has gay friends knows that they like women, but they are just sexually attracted to men not to women. Two very different things. I found this slip misleading, simplistic and unnecessary, not proper of Breillat, who is cleaver enough to explore themes with great depth. I would have preferred, as a woman, to have a straight man in the movie.I did like and hate the end, both things. To me, is mostly oniric, like a projection of the thoughts of the male character when he doesn't find the woman in the house. However, other people interpret the scene as real. The problem is that the scene is filmed hurriedly and is badly introduced so it is difficult to catch the meaning of it, if any.Regarding the acting, Amira Casar is OK in her role, with her expressive very sad aura and her almost artistic naked body; however, all what she says, would have needed of more dramatic intensity. Rocco Siffredi gives his best in this role; however, you cannot really pass over the fact that he can barely act. If he did, he would have turned himself into a gay guy. I never believed, not even for a microsecond, that the character he was playing was a gay. However, Breillat stated that he had written the character for him and that she was very impressed with him.Anatomy of Hell offers a noticeable deconstruction of female sex and sexuality and a feminist study of gender roles, but it it is extremely complex and repulsive (even kinky) at times, so it barely reaches and touches the viewer. Breillat included some notes to the movie in the DVD, in which she explains the movie at length. If you read it, you'll find how philosophical the movie is, and the meaning of each scene and the intentions of the film. They are really interesting. However, the viewer did not have those notes when went watching the movie, so he/she only can see what is in the screen and try to make sense of it.One of those films that won't leave you indifferent.

Robert J. Maxwell As 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.

chrisallinson This is the male view of Breillat's "Romance" (1999) and has been dubbed 'unwatchable' by the critics. Breillat's sensibility is the woman I wish as life-partner for my sons (in their mid 20's) - so contemporary, as Republicanism in the US (Conservatism here in Canada) and Sharia law the Muslim conservative creed, holds woman as grossly inferior - fecund and to be controlled! Its all about 'power and fear' for these men.A woman hires a man to watch her when she is unwatchable (at night, over four nights). Goya-like the woman opens herself as to a painter - the man, unable to see art fails even his primary mission: to watch the unwatchable, consequently, his life is changed as yours will be and mine now is! 30 years ago, I went through many of the complex subtleties around menstruation as power - men are potent only through the vagina/uterus, we cannot bear life, woman's exclusive purview! The bar scene with buddy after the last night is as illuminating as it gets from a BS male macho perspective - the man ultimately reduced to tears of frustration, the woman returned to the sea.After watching be sure to view the director interview on the DVD special features - 65 minutes of background/backdrop that is intellectually of the highest order - a true high-art film maker! Shot in Portugal, on the Mediterranean, the 'twilight' over water is totally different to the 'palette' (used in a similar metaphor-movie, "The Door in the Floor") of the US East Coast beach - the Hamptons on Long Island, New York. (I lived a block from The Shore in New Jersey for a couple of years.) The Mediterranean light is more 'evocative', purple and dark blue, than the 'melancholy' sand haze and light blue of The Shore twilight.

Colette Corr Although the confrontational images in this film only make it suitable for a select audience, I recommend it for armchair philosophers and those interested in gender politics.Amira Casar plays a young woman who pays a gay man (played by real life hetero porn star Rocco Siffredi) to watch her for four days. Over that time, he confronts his own revulsion at the intimacies of the female body.You will probably have heard of the various extreme images in this film (a garden rake being inserted into the woman's vagina, for example) but surprisingly, the film does not titillate. Every action is designed to develop the characters and reveal a deeper truth.On one level, Anatomy of Hell blasts the misogynistic attitude towards women that can still exist. What is most interesting about this film is the man's journey towards accepting women, and his feminine side, revealed through the use of a female voice-over for his character.By confronting taboos, for example the taboo against menstruation, Breillat's characters become closer to each other, all the more telling because the man is gay and has no basic need for women. Yet, this film is not simply a rant against men, because the male character is the only one that is fully realised. He develops throughout the film, whereas the woman remains static and is more of an archetype of female power rather than a human being.I found Anatomy of Hell fascinating and far less shocking than I anticipated. In Australia, the film was banned until the decision was overturned. I agree with the latter decision, there is a a second of footage featuring a naked young girl in sexual play that should be removed from the film. Some taboos exist for a purpose and that is one of them.