Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l'enfer) Movie Review:


Let’s cut to the chase. This is, sexually, an explicit movie. Possibly the most sexually explicit legitimate movie ever made (certainly that I have
seen). It will probably never be shown on television. Not even on Channel 5.

To give you an idea of how explicit it is, it tells us at the start that, for the female lead’s (credited as ‘the woman,’ and played by Amira Casar) most explicit shots, a body double was used. Ten minutes into the film, we see the woman in a full frontal, head-to-toe nude shot. Therefore the body (or, rather, genitals) double is used for the shots that are MORE explicit than that.

The woman, at the start of the film, is in a gay nightclub. She bumps into a man as she heads to the toilets. She takes out a razor and slits her
wrist. The man, (played by Rocco Siffredi, the porn star, and credited as, yes, ‘the man’) who has followed her, walks into the toilet, sees what she’s
done, and asks ‘why did you do that?’ Her answer is typical of the whole movie: ‘Because I’m a woman.’

For some reason this opening made me think the movie might be better than I anticipated; that it would develop into a modern version of “Last Tango in Paris,” or allow us to understand her state of mind. It does not. The characters remain one-dimensional. The do not even have characteristics.
They just have genitals, which we are shown many, many times.

She pays him to spend four nights with her. She wants to explain, in her own (nude) way, why she hates men. He gets to her house (‘you’re early,’
she says, ‘I’ve not had time to undress’ – a line right out a porn flick). She undresses, and masturbates in front of him. He is initially repulsed,
and we hear his thoughts, although the voice over is not by him; it is by Catherine Breillat, the film’s director. He compares her genitals to a newborn chick (for some reason), and we cut to him killing a bird when he was a boy by stamping on it. There is, I believe, a conspiracy towards me at the Edinburgh Film Festival this year to try to see how many animal deaths I can sit through.

His mind may be repulsed, but his body is clearly not. They have sex (they certainly do not ‘make love’). The physicality and (un-erotic) gynaecological detail is realistic. Their dialogue is not. She continues, even during sex, to discuss, objectively, what is happening. She is not very passionate. Their sex is joyless; to keep going on about how men want to kill all women, etc., during the actual act of sex, really takes the… fun
out of it. She is such a spoilsport.

That I did not find the film erotic does not mean you won’t. I certainly can’t convince you one way or another. As Gene Siskel once wisely said, ‘it’s hard to argue someone out of an erection’ (advice the man in this film seems to live by). I don't think the film is intended to be erotic. Its message is that when men get turned on, they feel both love and hatred of women (what Freud called the 'Madonna-Whore complex'). I didn’t, however, like the way the man’s homosexuality is dealt with. He is gay. She picked him up a gay club. And yet the film suggests he is gay because he is disgusted by women. Yes, but isn’t he also, you know, attracted to men? The film seems to suggest that he chose homosexuality to get back at women, as if he had a choice about what turns him on.

What is most surprising about the film is that, despite its shock value, even at less than 80 minutes, it’s kind of boring. The woman makes a lot of interesting, feminist, points, but I have always felt that that sort of analysis is for books, not movies. We don’t care much about what she says because we don’t care about her. The characters in “Last Tango,” on the other hand, were developed, and we cared about them, and understood them. Their dialogue was lucid and rang true; here it seems written and emotionless.

In this one, the dialogue during sex is so utterly unbelievable that a lot of the time I wasn’t even listening to what they were saying; I was just so
shocked they were saying it. When the orgasms in the movie come (so to speak), they are without a hint of joy, or even blissful escape. It is like
they are still analysing their feelings during their moment of success. There is a heartlessness in the film, in the way the characters are only used to make points about the relationship between women and men, and aren’t permitted any believable emotions.

There is a scene in the film devoted to periods. The woman discusses how tampons are used (this may be informative to men). She then presents him
with a used tampon, which she places in a glass of water. Then, you guessed it, she has him drink the water. As a director, Breillat may not let us understand the characters at all, but she does have balls. So to speak.

** (out of 5)

Adam Whyte

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