To be Breillat is to be brave. The filmmakers employs techniques similar to male filmmakers in porn, but by doing so from her own female perspective, challenges such notions as bad/ good, gay/straight, clean/dirty, etc.
A suicidal woman propositions a gay man to be with her as she goes through her monthly bleeding, and exposes her body to him in an ashamed manner. The gay man soon learns much from this woman and his view of woman turns from hatred and disgust, to fear and astonishment. One could argue that he never truly hated her, since the very first scene involves him saving the woman from her own hands. When the man leaves, a very telling conversation is filmed between him and a male companion at a tavern. This is part of the enigma that Breillat has wanted to show us with Anatomy of Hell.
WHile there are scenes that are perturbing (close-ups on female anatomy, graphic sexual sodomy and depictions of menstruation) there is also great scenes of France's coastal region at night, and a raging ocean alongside rocky cliffs. There is an aesthetic that may perturb some viewers, but these tensions are merely calculated by a brilliant filmmaker wishing to comment on the reason for sexual and social difference among men and women.
A suicidal woman propositions a gay man to be with her as she goes through her monthly bleeding, and exposes her body to him in an ashamed manner. The gay man soon learns much from this woman and his view of woman turns from hatred and disgust, to fear and astonishment. One could argue that he never truly hated her, since the very first scene involves him saving the woman from her own hands. When the man leaves, a very telling conversation is filmed between him and a male companion at a tavern. This is part of the enigma that Breillat has wanted to show us with Anatomy of Hell.
WHile there are scenes that are perturbing (close-ups on female anatomy, graphic sexual sodomy and depictions of menstruation) there is also great scenes of France's coastal region at night, and a raging ocean alongside rocky cliffs. There is an aesthetic that may perturb some viewers, but these tensions are merely calculated by a brilliant filmmaker wishing to comment on the reason for sexual and social difference among men and women.