There are some films you watch to get a message and this is one of the most surprising. The director sees a dichotomy in men's views of women which some women internalize. Paglia talks about the same thing, without focusing on the 'infernal' part that dominates this film. What is similar in Paglia and Breillat's views is that men admire tidiness, completeness, finality; they see the world in an almost binary way. They see women as complicated by the potential to create life and abhor the mechanisms that support that creation. Paglia calls it the Apollonian vs Dionysian. Breillat doesn't use those terms, but might think of it as Apollonian vs Cthonian. I personally don't have this view, but I've heard about it long enough to assume it's widespread among men.Breillat relieves us men of the overgeneralization by using a sexually ambiguous character to act as the "watcher of the unwatchable." Our heroine is ambiguous, too, in that she wants the opposite of what she claims and has chosen a difficult path to get it. I am conflicted in how to rate this film. It is simple on the surface, and deals with a lot of imagery that will be intolerable to some viewers (other reviews on IMDb reflect that). As the launching point of discussion between men and women, this film serves its purpose. But I do not see this as a film that a man and a woman should watch together, because their respective reactions may color and diminish the other's experience.

Some of us are more nimble than others at being so and some of us hide it well, but it is the human condition to be stupid. We all are and that's that. The best we can hope for is to find those that do it gracefully.Make no mistake, Breillat is stupid. She would bring any gathering down and to have her as a friend would be a burden. And yet she has given me images that I carry around (with other gems) to serve as touchstones into the world of women. Her films are poorly composed but there really are some cinematically perfect moments in every one. So what you want to do is watch this (or any of them) and avoid at all costs any of her own interviews. I know what she intends. Its uninteresting, not worth the effort. The dialog is similarly a waste of life, but you cannot get to the images without it, so drudge through, please.The reason is that she knows the power of vision and she moves the imagination of image with grace. All the droll theorizing I can forgive, even credit as bravery because she knows how the eye and mind work as tractors to the soulThere's a truly disturbing act of cowardice though at the very beginning, before the credits. We are told that the more "disgusting" things weren't actually done by the actress, but by a body double. Now why?You might want to see this before "Loss of Sexual Innocence" which is equally banal in the same way, and as powerful.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

As French as a baguette, or rather a bidet, the movie begins in a gay night club when one of the patrons finds a woman trying to slice her wrists in the john. After he takes her to a hospital she does for him what gay men do for one another, then offers him a fairly lucrative job. The job? Watching her where she can't be watched. And that's just the beginning.For almost all of the rest of the film, the unnamed woman languorously lounges around nude on the bed, a naked maja, while the gay guy sits there and either looks on with disgust and insults her or strips and paws over her, slinging her pale limp limbs around as if they belonged to a no-longer-animate carcass.She invites him to examine her body before and during her period. They share a glass of diluted menstrual blood. He outlines her nether regions in lipstick and sodomizes her while she lies blankly under him.It's all just about as exciting as the drawings in a medical textbook. Actually, come to think of it, when I was a kid, thirty million years ago, those medical drawings were kind of entertaining. We also giggled while passing around a paperback with the titillating title, "The Layman's Legal Guide." At least two of us memorized the legal definition of "rape." Well, that's neither here nor there. Did I mention that they have molasses-slow conversations during which neither of them smiles or laughs? They talk about things like "your disgusting obtuseness" and "your malevolent triviality." Where else but in France could you find two low-brow strangers carrying on a dialog like that. I was having dinner in a Parisian restaurant once when a fracas erupted at the next table. The maitre de apologized to me for the argument, explaining that the waiter was a Cartesian. Compare this with the similarly explicit but far less enlightening English film, "Nine Songs," where the couple have nothing to say at all.Finally the gay guy returns for his appointed watching and finds the apartment empty except for a clump of bloodstained sheets, which he flings away in disgust.Now, I understand that this film is -- I think I'm going to get this right -- this film is an exploration of gender issues. You see, men and women don't know each other very well. Especially men don't know women too well. Especially gay men. They don't know how to insert a tampon or anything like that, let alone how a woman thinks. I have a certain sympathy there, the problem being a real one since each person's inner organs are swimming in a sea of different hormones.But -- well, these people aren't really supposed to be NORMAL in any way, are they? This isn't a story about a man and woman getting to know one another. It's about two fruitcakes who can't figure out what they're doing with one another.I honestly hope that this isn't the director's idea of the relationship between the sexes -- and I mean sexes, not genders. The woman is lassitude incarnate. The guy is a revolting brutal pig. Is this supposed to illustrate the roles that men and women play in society? It's not a rhetorical question. I really don't know. Maybe you can figure it out.The early anthropological theorist Westermarck argued that however women happen to be treated in a given culture they carried a mystery around with them, due chiefly to the fact that men simply cannot understand how or why women menstruate and have babies. Men were both envious, awed, and irritated by that mystique. Westermarck could have written this script.

Although the confrontational images in this film only make it suitable for a select audience, I recommend it for armchair philosophers and those interested in gender politics.Amira Casar plays a young woman who pays a gay man (played by real life hetero porn star Rocco Siffredi) to watch her for four days. Over that time, he confronts his own revulsion at the intimacies of the female body.You will probably have heard of the various extreme images in this film (a garden rake being inserted into the woman's vagina, for example) but surprisingly, the film does not titillate. Every action is designed to develop the characters and reveal a deeper truth.On one level, Anatomy of Hell blasts the misogynistic attitude towards women that can still exist. What is most interesting about this film is the man's journey towards accepting women, and his feminine side, revealed through the use of a female voice-over for his character.By confronting taboos, for example the taboo against menstruation, Breillat's characters become closer to each other, all the more telling because the man is gay and has no basic need for women. Yet, this film is not simply a rant against men, because the male character is the only one that is fully realised. He develops throughout the film, whereas the woman remains static and is more of an archetype of female power rather than a human being.I found Anatomy of Hell fascinating and far less shocking than I anticipated. In Australia, the film was banned until the decision was overturned. I agree with the latter decision, there is a a second of footage featuring a naked young girl in sexual play that should be removed from the film. Some taboos exist for a purpose and that is one of them.