The Exterminating Angels (2006)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I think what is meant to be taken seriously as important and poetic isn't as magnetic as the women who perform in director Jean-Claude Brisseau's Les Anges Exterminateurs. To me, the interpretation I got out of the whole film is that the director wants to establish a filmmaker's pursuit of purity and authenticity on screen but through such expectations often derives problems unforeseen and unprepared. But all that remains after the film ends to me is the provocative nature of the actresses and how they embrace the parts, going the extra mile for Brisseau. I really like the lead actor in The Exterminating Angels, Frédéric van den Driessche, as a sincere director of French thrillers who desires to make an experimental film about genuine female orgasms during a number of taboo acts (masturbation in an elegant restaurant, performing lesbian lovemaking in a hotel where being caught might happen, etc.). The screen tests with a number of delectable beauties (including one young porn starlet that conceals her career so she can defy his stereotyping her) reveal open admissions to him due to his fatherly, mature presence, direct interest in their feelings and thoughts, and comfort/ease shared between them and him. Because he is the kind of man that seems to be significantly approachable, respectful, curious, unintimidating, and personable, the ladies who become mainstays during the casting process of his film confide in, adore, and, in some cases, fall in love with him. The harm when their love is unrequited as the director doesn't have the same mounting feelings of developing passion, intensifying emotion and burgeoning adoration concludes this piece of rather pretentious (the film is said to be based on an experience Brisseau had in his past) erotic melodrama. This film includes "fallen angels" with a mission concerning the director and a possible hidden agenda involving a waitress with a boyfriend who is a hood. The price of asking so much from those performing for you intimately, on camera, and in personal conversation follows the director as he finds himself badly beaten by hooded thugs. There's even a cherubic dead grandmother that visits and attempts to protect the director! I think the film is at its best when the women allow themselves to commit to their passions and desires, and the dialogue that exists about them with the director who has an ability to pull from them what innermost lies behind the veil of uninhibited living. Good scene has a former actress (Raphaële Godin) confiding in the director regarding why she quit acting and how her life changed due to the experience of one breakout role when she was only sixteen years old. I especially liked the revelations of young women who speak honestly about sex and what lies within their fantasies, and how sometimes the director is an object of pleasure to them. This film is brimming with lovely women. A highlight includes a hilarious encounter for the director during an interview where one of the actresses asks the director if he could survey her seducing technique which turns out to be an embarrassingly dire striptease. The tragic breakdown of one of his actresses does conclude that identifying too closely with a person (in this case the director), allowing so much of yourself to be naked before him/her, and expecting something the same in return can result in unfortunate consequences.

French film makers are prone to mixing banal philosophy and soft core porn. Their tiresome philosophies of pleasure are ALWAYS mere justification for voyeurism and mental masturbation for the predominantly male viewers, some of whom evidently hope that their wives and girlfriends will be stimulated too. They can thus escape the horrors of monogamy, if only in their minds. This transparently false justification is the essence of kitsch. On an intellectual level this film is no better than Exit To Eden, which also justified voyeurism and diluted forms of perversion with the same pretentious twaddle. But at least we are spared from seeing men in G strings and Rosie O'Donnell in a black corset and fishnet stockings. The borrowings from Orphee are obvious. Death is a sinister beauty, corrupt police do her work, and coded radio messages appear at random. Even the title borrows from Bunuel. However, little is done with these elements. They are tiny bits of brain candy for the critics, like finding Waldo. We do see some pretty girls, but they are mostly insane. BOTTOM LINE: For men who need a jump start.

My girlfriend and I saw this at the IFC in NYC on Friday night. I went to film school, she studied French in college, we both loved Short Bus - we thought this would be fun date movie. Man, were we wrong.As a film that's trying to be "art" it humorlessly apes just about every art film convention from the early days of Bergman to Wenders Wings of Desire. It is literally a shopping list of art film cliché's. That in itself would not be a crime if the film's treatment of these cliché's wasn't so boring. As well, the script is mediocre at best. Maybe this is due to a bad translation, but my girl, who speaks French, told me the translation was fairly accurate. And cinematagraphicaly, the film is just shot badly. Many shots are ackwardly framed and staged. It reminded me of Kevin Smith's Clerks, only at least Clerks had a strong story and clever script that over came it's tech limitations. This whole film just feels slightly less than mediocre on every level.As for the story, the director wants us to believe that his doppleganger in the film is observing these woman play out their erotic fantasies because he doesn't understand female pleasure. But it's obvious that he enjoyed watching three girls get naked and screw each other. Just because he didn't touch them doesn't mean he didn't enjoy it egotistically. Yet the film never holds him accountable for this. He is presented as a victim of crazy actresses, an unsympathetic wife, a corrupt judicial system, and ultimately a victim of fate or divinity itself. The film seems to ask us to envy his power at getting these girls to kink it out in front of him at his beck and call and at the same time we are suppose to sympathize at what a good husband, artist, and father figure he is and how nobody understands what a victim he really is. It just doesn't work. Apparently, the events of the film are based on a real situation that happened to the film's director. This story sounds like something a philandering husband would tell his wife about being taken to a strip club. "No, dear, I didn't enjoy it all. I spent the whole time talking with the girls about Hobbes and Locke." Bullsh!t. Also, there is a lot of talk about taboos in the film. Apparently, the director's idea of taboo is having sex in a hotel room. Oh, how daring! Lastly, there are two fairly sexy sequences in the film. However, they are almost completely ruined by the film's score. Every time the girls start to get naked, this bizarre 80's horror film score comes on the soundtrack. This combined with the bad writing and staging just kills any feelings of arousal you may have. Throughout the screening people would just get up and leave. And when the final "tragic" moments of the film were played out the whole theatre was laughing at how bad it was. The only thing anyone was talking about as we filed out into the lobby was how much we wanted our money and time back.

Following the path of his late feature, "Secret things", "The exterminating angels" probably close an era in Jean Claude Brisseau's career(one of the most interesting of contemporary french cinema). You can film sex and nudity and not ever telling stories of provocation and other things that women could refuse to show but in the attempt maybe you don't realize what the camera-eye is registering: passion,loneliness, madness and ... love. Anyone could say Brisseau hides things but you must check if you are aware enough to see what this movie is really are. One of the best of the year and one of the best exercises of freedom in wide format