Anatomy Of Hell (2004, NR)

I watched a couple of horror movies this week and a couple of French movies this week and all were horrifying.  This French-language film (Anatomie De L'Enfer in the original tongue) probably horrified me more than anything else I've seen recently.  I mean... it had some decent qualities, but it was very graphic in its depiction of the subject matter (which would generally be considered indecent qualities).  It starts with a straight woman shuffling through a gay bar, bumping into a man to get his attention and cutting her wrists in the bathroom (the scene and a brief conversation afterwards make it clear that this was a cry for attention rather than an actual attempt to die).  The man has a great disdain  for women but clearly does have some human compassion, as he took her to the hospital after she cut herself and he made sure she was OK afterwards.  The rest of the movie is the monologues/dialogues/interactions they have as she pays him to come over and "tell [her] what [he] see(s)" (the female form, etc).  I think the title refers to his idea of a woman's body.



Some of his descriptions, while scathing do have a certain poetic quality, and many of the frames of the film would actually make a pretty cool painting.  That's the good part.  The way he treats her and some of the thing she does to demonstrate/explain the female body/femininity to him were pretty disturbing.  There weren't any bloody injuries but... let's just say that a slight change to that statement would make it untrue.  Also consider that there's a text screen at the start of the film stating that a body-double was used for "the most intimate (read: graphic) scenes", which would often be an obvious implication in an American film (at least one with a famous actor), but the fact that they felt the need to explain it here should act as sort of a warning about the content.  There were a lot more close-up shots of a vagina than I would have been comfortable with and some of the things done with that organ I could have done without seeing.  I'd give it... uuuuuh 1.5 stars.  It did have some value but it was really hard to watch, and probably not worth the pain.