Anatomy of Hell (2004)

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Sorry, Director and writer Catherine Breillat, but this movie Anatomie De L'enfer is awful. This film shows the intellectual bankruptcy of an modern feminist. The symbolism in this art film nearly mean nothing, but a horrible movie made by a horrible and possible militantly disturbed person. Dramas like this that explore female sexuality in a clinical, bleak style and with unconventional explicitness are just self-hatred filth. This is depressing porn in my opinion. The movie opens with title cards telling us that it is a work of fiction and the lead actress had a body double. Wow, great way to ruin the film before it even started, by telling us that we're watching a movie. That would work better at the end pass the credits, not the beginning. Di This film is basically opens up with two characters, one female and one male who are complete strangers and come together to discuss and perform sex. It's too bad, the movie starts out with two random people giving each other oral sex that are not the main characters. The camera spent a few minutes on people, before moving on. We'll never see them or they will mention any more in the film past this point. There was no reason for them to be filmed. It was just a random porn scene. Anyways, we meet Amira Casar as the woman and Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi as 'the man' in a gay club. The girl is on her way to the restroom to slit her wrists with a razor blade because she's angry that none of the men are paying her any attention to her. Stupid woman, it's because they are gay. I have no clue why a gay man is representing all-men or a self-hating woman as all women. I only have a theory that she trying to get a gay guy horny for her nude body. The woman is obviously after male approval and into celebrating her womanhood; and she probably picked a homosexual to do it with because she knows that he will not become emotionally involved with her and remain nonthreatening. I also felt she wanted to be rejected by the man so she picked a gay man. She wanted confirmation on her self-loathing that she picked the man who hate her the most. The movie gives a camera shot of a clit surround by hair for a long time, follow up with a scene of Rocco as a kid trying to take care of a baby bird. The baby bird surround a nest is supposed to represent the vagina. When the baby bird dies, the boy stomp on it. Awful metaphor for his homosexuality, but interesting. What is the film trying to say? That men or gay men can't take care of children. Only women. That's deeply mistaken. I saw many fathers able to take care of their kids. Then the movie has the nerves to show child pornography. This is a no-no. I don't care if it's an art film, showing nude children is wrong! Somebody call 'To catch a Predator' on Catherine Breillat! There are lots of graphic close ups of private parts and various scenes involving a garden rake, and lipstick. Then there is the infamous scene dealing with menstruation. The movie is telling us that men are evil, because they are horrified by menstruation. First off, women hate and fear periods too. Some women are disturbed talking about semen, so does that make all women evil. No. Let's not forget urine or feces. Are people evil because they don't want to see urine or poop around? No. Let's not forget that everybody bleeds. Sorry, Catherine Breillat, you're mistaking, guys again. Ms. Breillat's only motivation by having these scenes is for shock value. The dialogue is stroppy, rigid and pretentious, with lots of references to feminine subjugation and male domination. It's actually hard to figure out what the director is trying to say in this film. The acting is passable, although I thought Siffredi was surprisingly worthy. Still, the characters are preposterous and boring. Breillat's use of tracking shots create a wonderfully dreamlike quality in the exterior scenes. The scenes of the raging ocean, in particular, are hauntingly stunning. The music is awful. The disco pop is annoying. I don't like how the movie unfairly portrays men as being lustful, violent idiots that women should throw rocks at. She also unfairly portrays women as martyrs who let themselves be victimized and revel in the dichotomy of brutal sex acts being both objects of desire and disgust. Still, I give the movie props for making me think and interpretation what she meant by the scenes. Whether the character wanted to have sex with Amira's character or not is left to be debated later. Anatomy of Hell is a hard film to watch and it's filled with images you're not likely to see anywhere else, even in pornography. The more conservative viewer should be well warned to stay away, but I think the more open-minded viewer might not like it, too. Dehumanization movies such as this have no baring for normal audience, unless you already depressed, or hateful. Unless you're curious about sex relations, or having sex issues. Don't watch.

This is an extremely difficult film to watch, Certainly, I appreciated seeing it alone. It is not and experience I would wish to share in a theater.Daniel Day-Lewis may "drink your milkshake," but I doubt very much if he would partake of the woman's (Amira Casar) tea made with a used tampon, and offered to the man (Rocco Siffredi) as a means of bonding. It gives "drinking the blood of my enemies" a whole new meaning.Catherine Breillat has certainly pushed the envelope with this film about men and women and men's hatred and fears of women. There is really nothing erotic about this film; it is provocation meant to shock and awe.That may be what is needed in the discussion, but it certainly takes a strong person to observe and think.The Woman hires The Man, who happens to be gay, and can therefore be more objective (?) to observe her over four nights and comment on what he finds objectionable about women. The love/hate/fear between men and women is discussed and played out in a way I have not seen before, but in such a way that it really made me think. I believe that is Breillat's objective, and she certainly achieved it.It is not meant to be erotic, and it is not pornographic, although is ostensibly has real sex included, but is, shall we say, meant to provoke discussion.

'Anatomie de l'Enfer' brings to the screen a young woman hiring a gay man to watch her in her intimacy during her 'inwatchable' period. Set in a minimally furnitured house, like the Parisian apartment in 'Last tango', it tries to be the opposite of the classic movie. Where 'Tango' was sexy, 'Anatomie' is disgusting. Attaction is transformed into repulsion. Meaningful silence is treaded for meaningless speech, and while the movie tries to say a lot about the relationship between sexes, it succeeds to say very little, and it does it in many many words on screen or off-screen, but none cinematographic or raising real interest. The film is well acted and the cinematography is good, but the feeling I got after watching it was of a badly spent amount of talent with a largely boring result.

I've watched this movie twice, and it was not until the 2nd time that I began to understand it. I am a woman, so at least I am competent for that perspective from the female sex. It all too possible lacks inclusiveness, but the female perspective is not so much an imposition of the director's prejudices as an invitation to seriously question the foundation of human race: the reign of male-dominated sexuality and the illusion of the ultimate achievement of sexual pleasure through a man and a woman. These two problems are inter-related to each other. One could be said to be the flip side of the other; they are the same problem.First here are some points I gathered from the movie. 1. Does sex need to be meaningful? Sex is just sex. The sensuality has nothing to do with love. Distinct though these two are, they are able to mingle. For love to have meaning, it must exhibit itself in that process of sexual practice, conscious or not. Surely this is not the only occasion for love to act for itself, but its great force is beyond all imagination. For sex to have meaning, it must attach itself to something. And then everything's beautiful. It seems that it cannot live alone, but why does it have to live? That's the problem. I mean we don't talk about eating as if there's some great myth about it. But we do dramatize sex. Human beings are fascinated by the study and practice of sexuality to such an extent that they, some intentionally, some not, deceive themselves. And the most funny thing is that they attach sex to love and make them inseparable. Don't get me wrong. I am not evangelizing the separation of sex and love. Nor did the director in Anatomy of Hell. We adore that. But the truth is set patterns of love victimize sex and sex in turn disappoints love. Why? Because we do not admit that they are two different things and it is we who relate them together. Where is the breaking-point? It lies at the definition of both, with love being supposedly more important. I will briefly discuss these definitions when I come to my 2nd point but now let me finish my first point first. The movie suggests that we not take too seriously sexual pleasure because first of all we tend to be trapped in those pre-defined patterns of love and then fantasize sex in this context. W-A-T-C-H the movie. I think it's really documentary in a great sense. It tells you that sexual pleasures are varied and it simply is not true that only sex between a woman and man is the most pleasant or that only certain practices (like foreplay, penetration, movement inside and orgasm after) could make the most pleasant. It tells you this from the beginning towards the end. So if you take that pleasure too seriously, you are doomed to be disappointed or indulged in self-deceit. Look at how little pleasure that woman got when that men finished the whole thing. She could feel at heaven by simply masturbating herself. She knows how to please herself better than anyone else in this world, organ-pleasure-wise.But this does not mean sex is no pleasure. It has plenty and why should we not be allowed to explore that? This brings us to my 2nd point. 2. Definitions of love and sex revisited. Love/sex is not necessarily between a man and a woman. Consider how simple this truth is. Yet few could accept that. Even those gay men and women are taking love as excuses for their being together; love is not an excuse, it's an initiation. Love should come as no excuse if you only want to explore sex with both or either sexes and no more. The desire for exploration is honest; the insert of such an excuse is not. Don't get me wrong again. Now I am so approval of any kind of love and I shall pass no judgment on how love works between any kind of people. I believe in its existence and everywhere. What I'm trying to say is this, even people who are supposedly in the positon of re-defining love do not know what they are doing. It's simple as this: virgins who have sex with men are not necessarily feminists; they might as well go to the hospital after that to regain their cherry or feel guilty all the time.So, it's only orthodoxy that certain types of sex are accepted; they are not true. It is a belief, yet a misbelief. The movie starts with two gay men with one doing the blow-job for the other. I know it's gonna fly in the face of all conventional wisdom and cultural bondage. And I'm right. People find something out, i.e., they find out that sex (and only certain sex) between a man and a woman is only supposedly right and they question it (probably because they just don't enjoy it) and then they abandon it. Some feel guilty and need discreetness; others don't. But what's wrong with the simple fact that when it comes to sexuality same sex knows better than the opposite sex does. I told you not to take too seriously. This is nothing, just knowledge and psychology. It is something to the extent that it reveals the misbelief of love also. Only certain types of love are accepted and this is wrong. These types are considered sacred and made so through manipulation, and now it is time to uncover that.3. Love and be true to yourself. Now that we find out everything about sex, its simple but misleading nature, all the evils it's generated and lies it's been telling, we should wake up. It's self-sufficient, but only part of life, not all. Love makes everything beautiful, including sex. Any kind of love, I mean.