Anatomy of Hell, Catherine Breillat, Film Review: Cinephilia

Synopsis: A young woman (Amira Casar) looks out of place as she stands in a gay bar watching the action on the dance floor. Touching one of these men (Rocco Siffridi) as she rushes up stairs to the toilet, she invites him back to her place. She offers to pay him to 'watch the unwatchable' over the course of four nights. He takes her up on the offer.

Catherine Breillat courts controversy. She makes her films to express her own world view; not to see how she can satisfy an audience. Anatomy of Hell will more than likely confound the hell out of you. What is this film about? How are we supposed to react? Let me help you, If you like it, you're an upper-class cineaste, and if you don't, you're a either (a) a member of the Australian Family Association or (b) a regular movie goer who can see when a director is basically having a good old wank up there on the screen (Sorry).

Catherine Breillat's films are undeniably intellectual. When The Guy tells The Girl that she talks too much, you kinda have to agree. It shouldn't be this hard. Or should it? Let's get back to what the film is about. We are told on the flyer that "Breillat sets out to prove that all men are, at their core, misogynists.' Okay, if this is so, how come most of the comments on what is hateful about women come from the mouth of The Girl. She is the one who seems intent on defining the role of women as shameful and shameless.

And just to make sure you don't think you've got it sorted, Breillat has said about her latest cinematic offering: "This film is my first where I wanted to identify with the man. Sure, the voice emanating from the woman is that of destiny but, as I'm a bit schizo, let's say I am the man discovering the woman who is me."

Catherine Breillat's films deal with raw sexuality. For many years now she has been accused of making art-porn. Is it considered porn because she doesn't shy away from showing close-up shots of erect penises? In an interview with Rocco Siffridi, who is, by the way, a highly regarded Italian porn star, he states that 'mainstream cinema is all about emotion, porn is about sensation.' He should know. On the other hand, Amira Casar, who plays The Girl is quoted as saying, ' for me the film deals with the sacred and the profane.' Casar admits that she had to surrender to Breillat's vision, and can understand 'that it may shock those who don't buy into what she is saying.'

Allow me to quote Breillat one more time, this time on her 1999 film Romance. Breillat said: “I'm interested in myth and transcendence and this cannot be compared with daily reality. It's not about realism. It's a different type of knowledge, a different type of perception”.
Once I did have a dream that was not unlike what I understand to be 'the message' of this film. In the dream there is a woman who looks like a character from a 40s film. She has crimped hair and a beautiful face. She looks coyly off screen. I look at her from many different angles as if looking through a camera. I feel secure in that this is all there is to see, when suddenly, she lifts up her dress to reveal a bruised and bloodied vagina and anus, post birth. In the dream I am shocked but I think I understand what the woman is 'saying' to me. Perhaps Breillat is saying the same thing.

I don't believe that all men hate women, but maybe we need films like Anatomy of Hell to annoy us or aggravate us so that we stop and think about what kind of world we live in where the lives of so many women are lived in fear.