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Anatomy Of Hell

2003, Movie, NR, 87 mins

Anatomy Of Hell: Review

ANATOMY OF HELL | ANATOMIE DE L'ENFER
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A movie that opens with an explicit shot of oral sex administered in a garbage-strewn lot next to a gay bar is probably not for everyone, but if you're feeling open-minded and a little adventurous, this chilling exploration of the gender gap from Gallic bad-girl Catherine Breillat is worth a look. Our unnamed, empty-eyed heroine (Amira Casar) first encounters her unnamed, golden-haired partner (Euro-porn stud Rocco Siffredi) shortly after she slits her wrists in the men's room of a Paris disco. He takes her outside, and after giving him what she suspects all men are really after — oral sex — she makes him an unusual proposition: She'll pay him a lot of money if he'll spend four evenings at her isolated seaside chateau simply watching her where "she's unwatchable" and telling her what he sees. He initially demurs — he's not only gay but finds women's bodies unappealing, and has no desire to gaze upon what she's got to display. But when she ups the offer, he accepts. On their first night together, she sprawls naked on the bed and explains that women's bodies are capable of inspiring one of two feelings in men: disgust or brutality. As far as our man is concerned, she's right: He's repulsed by the body hair she doesn't bother to shave and the puckered genital flesh that queasily recalls a baby bird he accidentally crushed to death when he was a child. And yet he's fascinated. As he continues to look, she tells him why it is that the female body cries out for mutilation, and how the inaccessible female sex, like the vast nothingness of the ocean outside her window, fills men with horror. Later that night, he has sex with her sleeping body; revolted or not, this man who once felt so immune to the opposite sex has fallen under this stranger's spell. Rarely has any woman artist, never mind a filmmaker, ever been so frank about what men think about women and, even more importantly, what women think men are thinking. Breillat's theories, which soon become intertwined with her own theories of men and menstruation, are fascinating, but Breillat's automatic assumption that a gay man is most repulsed by a woman's body and thus somehow more susceptible to violence is unfair. Nevertheless, it's an admirably bold film, Siffredi is surprisingly good, and it's filled with images you're not likely to see anywhere else. There's a romantic interlude with a garden rake, a cup of used-tampon tea and a scene in which lipstick is lovingly applied to just about every orifice you'd care to name. Ah, romance. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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