Regular Price $24.99

Starring: Alexandre Belin,  Claudio Carvalho,  Amira Casar,  Bruno Fernandes (II),  Pauline Hunt, 
Directed By:
Rated: Unrated
Release Date: 2003
Studio: Tartan Video
Format: AC-3,  Closed-captioned,  Color,  Dolby,  DVD-Video,  Subtitled,  Widescreen,  NTSC, 

Editorial Reviews and DVD Information about Anatomy of Hell

Description
Provocative filmmaker Catherine Breillat (Romance) returns with her latest and most controversial film yet! Over four nights in a house in the middle of nowhere, a woman on the verge pays a handsome stranger to watch her "where she's unwatchable." Confronting the unspeakable, discovering the unshowable, and sharing the unsharable, they learn the real secrets of how men truly see women, and how women truly see themselves. Pushing the boundaries of cinema, Anatomy of Hell will only be available in its original theatrical, unrated version. French w/ English Subtitles.

Customer Reviews for Anatomy of Hell

Unjustly overlooked by those with a healthy biblical fear of femaninity
This movie is a sexual holocaust, but I'm still a believer that such rites of dehumanization do have a place in modern cinema. Someone had to do it, and the fact that it is directed by a woman gives her free license to obliterate the preconceptions of femininity and its plethora of powers and weaknesses. It paints a stark picture of the behavioral patterns which we're forced to adhere to in our day-to-day lives and attacks them in a very blunt fashion. I love it. It's confronting and unrelenting.

The French have always known how to gut their audience, and this movie is something I look upon as a challenge. Initially I was set on edge, and its unrelenting subject matter and subsequent exploration of the anatomical mechanisms of sexuality is something which I found to challenge my previous views in many ways.

Amira Caser is immaculate in her role, her simple facial expressions portray the complexities of the vulnerable state she allows herself to be placed in throughout the most confronting scenes, with simple and subtle gestures of fear and excitement showing glimpses for all those who choose to absorb this film fully.

Perhaps the fact that this movie stars prominent porn actor Rocco could taint its subject to the general audience, but the role he fills demands than he be comfortable and confident in his expression of explicit sexual materials and for this reason I believe he is perfectly suited for the part, and really not a bad actor at the end of the day.

My conclusion is that this film is more challenging and abrasive than any horror you've yet seen, and it takes a stronger being who is prepared to explore this topic brutally, without having it painted in a soft light, and for its honesty I must give it full credit.
Anatomy of Hell

Narrow Focus
I've seen a few Catherine Breillat films now. I saw Romance when it originally came out in theaters and was a big controversy, NC-17, banned in U.S. theaters (the uncut version) due to graphic nudity. Well Anatomy of Hell has its share of graphic nudity which is typical in Breillat films. The problem with Breillat films; especially this one, is that she is fixated on the idea that men find certain aspects of female anatomy and physiology such as their menstrual cycle, unpleasant or distasteful and she keeps reiterating this theme over and over ad nauseam in each film she makes because apparently in her world (that is in her mind) this is the case. So she keeps trying to make a big feminist statement to enlighten the average primordial male as well as traditionally stigmatized women, that it is not this unclean curse to be feared and loathed but rather just nature and femininity and is not unpleasant but on the contrary; tasteful (no pun intended but if you chose to see this film you'll understand my choice of words) So the film is not as good as Romance because she goes too far to make a point which most people; both men and women already have a pretty good understanding of but Breillat thinks she's pioneering into some kind of untouched territory here. Well perhaps she is but maybe there are just some things that should remain more subtle and vague and do not need to be exploited. I think to some degree Breillat actually exploits women in her films while trying to liberate them.Anatomy of Hell

Slow and Weird
Some scenes are odd and better off not watching. It's interesting i guess, i do give these people credit for making this film. It depends on what you're into ... wether you will enjoy this film or not. Try not to go by others reviews and opinions always judge for yourself.Anatomy of Hell

Unpleasant and Ugly
It is not often that I see a film and feel uncomfortable and disgusted. Especially when I have some understanding of the ground I'm going to cover before engaging in a Catherine Breillat film-watching experience. I actually enjoyed her film Fat Girl tremendously, and I even liked and recommend the more obviously gratuitous movie Romance. If Breillat is a voice for womenkind, then those graphic films had a more concrete bone to pick with mankind. Anatomy of Hell is a film that tries even harder to successfully offer the idea that pornography, which in some cases this film turns out to be, can in fact be made effectively by a good director, albeit the means here as opposed to pornography are intended to serve a far more worthy end. Breillat is a filmmaker with merit but this particular film's message, if it exists at all, is so abstract that it gets completely lost and suddenly the accusations that Breillat is intentionally trying to offend us creep up from the dark again to spoil her valiant crusade against the crimes of man. It is a shame because I really cherish the idea that a filmmaker of Breillat's boldness can and does exist.

Anatomy of Hell, or Anatomie de l'enfer, is actually adapted from Breillat's novel Pornocratie. It follows an unnamed and troubled woman (Amira Casar) who meets an unnamed homosexual man (Rocco Siffredi) under some pretty dire circumstances. After their initial encounter she makes a strange request that the man watch over her for four days. During this time the conversations get very obscure, probably a bit pretentious, and of course the dialogue seems to me completely unlikely to come from anyone's mouth. I will admit my French is not good enough to follow these scenes without subtitles so perhaps the conversations went over my head due to poor translation, but I doubt it.

I guess the point of the film was not completely over my head. Breillat clearly wants us to look into the rawness of a woman no matter how ugly and unpleasant it has the potential to be. However, in my view, she goes far beyond that for the sake of shock and I'm not so sure I'm willing to forgive that, so the film really fails for me. There are things that happen in this film that are absolutely disgusting in any right-minded person's eyes. And that is coming from someone who gave Salò and Sweet Movie four stars.Anatomy of Hell

This film will dig deeply into you...

It took getting a lot of distance between me and the film before I could actually produce this review. The French film by director Catherine Breillat was disturbing in a most real and visceral way and my first few days after having watched it I couldn't get it off of my mind. It purposefully reaches into the not-so-innocent pasts we all had and attempts to show the ways in which they have affected our sexual developments. It is literally written, at times, with menstrual blood with its provoking dialogue about the sexual relationship between a man and woman. It also really raises questions about the politics of looking and the fine boundary between looking and touching. My one complaint was that the film, while doing a great job about turning this woman's consumptive sexual and emotional crisis into a discussion of the psychological reasons for her sexual fears and compulsions, it completely simplified homosexuality into a condition of being repulsed by women. Obviously, it's far more than that and many men just prefer men and don't have a particular dislike of women. In all, though, this film prompted me to really do a long of soul searching about my own sexuality and relationship to my childhood so I would have to say that it is definitely worth watching.Anatomy of Hell