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Review

Catherine Breillat is among the most fiercely intelligent and courageous filmmakers in the world today. Since her 1976 debut film A Real Young Girl, Breillat has specialized in cerebral examinations of female sexuality, and some of her recent work – notably Fat Girl and particularly Romance - has seen Breillat pushing the normally accepted boundaries of graphic visual representation of sex. With her tenth (i.e. roman numeral X) feature, Breillat has expressed a desire to go even further: "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." To remark that she has certainly succeeded in her desire to push the limits of cinematic sexuality would be the understatement of the year. Anatomy of Hell is an astonishingly candid exploration of male-female relations, and a bold and fearless summation of Breillat's concerns as a filmmaker.

The story is simple: a woman (Amira Casar) meets a handsome gay man (porn star Rocco Siffredi) in a nightclub. She attempts suicide ("Because I'm a woman"), he saves her. She insults him, he slaps her face. Soon a deal is struck: she will pay him to ignore his revulsion at the female form and come to her isolated seaside house to examine her body in the most intimate ways imaginable –- in the process, a new form of intimacy develops between the two. While the couple's physical encounters are explicitly rendered and often startling (suffice to say, you'll never look at gardening tools – or tampons –- in the same way again, Breillat is not interested in titillation. Her clinical study of female sexual desire, and the masculine fear of this force, is chilly and unsparing – but also searing, perceptive, and often beautiful.

Please be advised that the film is very graphic, adult restrictions apply. (French with English subtitles)

Travis Crawford