Anatomy of Hell (2004)
It is not often that I see a film and feel uncomfortable and disgusted. Especially when I have some understanding of the ground I’m going to cover before engaging in a Catherine Breillat film-watching experience. I actually enjoyed her film Fat Girl tremendously, and I even liked and recommend the more obviously gratuitous movie Romance. If Breillat is a voice for womenkind, then those graphic films had a more concrete bone to pick with mankind. Anatomy of Hell is a film that tries even harder to successfully offer the idea that pornography, which in some cases this film turns out to be, can in fact be made effectively by a good director, albeit the means here as opposed to pornography are intended to serve a far more worthy end. Breillat is a filmmaker with merit but this particular film’s message, if it exists at all, is so abstract that it gets completely lost and suddenly the accusations that Breillat is intentionally trying to offend us creep up from the dark again to spoil her valiant crusade against the crimes of man. It is a shame because I really cherish the idea that a filmmaker of Breillat’s boldness can and does exist.
Italian pornstar Rocco Siffredi in a still from the movie.
Anatomy of Hell, or Anatomie de l’enfer, is actually adapted from Breillat’s novel Pornocratie. It follows an unnamed and troubled woman (Amira Casar) who meets an unnamed homosexual man (Rocco Siffredi) under some pretty dire circumstances. After their initial encounter she makes a strange request that the man watch over her for four days. During this time the conversations get very obscure, probably a bit pretentious, and of course the dialogue seems to me completely unlikely to come from anyone’s mouth. I will admit my French is not good enough to follow these scenes without subtitles so perhaps the conversations went over my head due to poor translation, but I doubt it.
Amira Casar
I guess the point of the film was not completely over my head. Breillat clearly wants us to look into the rawness of a woman no matter how ugly and unpleasant it has the potential to be. However, in my view, she goes far beyond that for the sake of shock and I’m not so sure I’m willing to forgive that, so the film really fails for me. There are things that happen in this film that are absolutely disgusting in any right-minded person’s eyes. And that is coming from someone who gave Salò and Sweet Movie decent reviews.
My rating is 2 out of 5 stars.
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