Anatomy of Hell

F 2003. D,S: Catherine Breillat. DoP: Yorgos Arvanitis and Guillaume Schiffman. Cast: Amira Casar, Rocco Siffredi. 77min.

To examine the close-ups used by a director is one way to cut to the heart of what he or she wants to express. In Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell the close-ups are reserved for the anus and vagina of the central female character. In Breillat’s vision it is through these orifices that the truest form of inter-human communication is realized. The narrative has an anonymous woman (representing all women) offering an anonymous man (representing all men) money to come to her house every night and watch her undress, masturbate, etc. Like in Pasolini’s Salo, and Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, a deep connection with another human being is equated with sexual debasement.

The man doesn’t only watch, he touches too, sticking fingers and rods and large rocks up her anus and vagina, staring at and smelling and tasting the blood that she secretes, as if it held the secrets of her soul.

Anatomy of Hell can be best described as a French existentialist version of Empire of the Senses, Oshima’s study of a claustrophobically possessive relationship which unfolds purely through sexual exploration.

The characters in Anatomy of Hell utter lines such as "what’s the point?", and "why bother?", and when they experience something meaningful they go and stare at the ocean. It is an attempt to make the characters’ experiences seem more meaningful, yet it only serves to put a smokescreen over Breillat’s expression. Every time there is something in the film worth pondering, she hides it under the characters’ doom-ridden statements, with a murder-fantasy, or with a general air of philosophical confusion.

Saul Symonds