Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Breillat’s one of those filmmakers who intentionally pushes people’s buttons, but unlike Gaspar Noe or David Lynch or any number of her contemporaries, I’m not sure there’s anything else to Breillat’s act. Shock seems to be her one trick, and that’s pretty much worn thin by this point for me. Today’s reviewer seems to feel the same way, judging by their harsh words for her new film...
Hi Harry:
Feast on this. Or rather - don't.
If removing a freshly bloodied Tampax, putting it into a glass of water and then drinking the contents appeals to you, then the latest slice of cinematic claptrap from the French “intellectual” director Catherine Breillat is right up your alley.
Like nearly all Breillat works, the film is going to this week's Rotterdam Festival. I wonder if women will laugh at it as much as they did as a Paris screening this week. They laughed at it, not with it. Guffawed!!
After the equally “scandalous” Romance, this is the second film Breillat has made with the Italian porno stud Rocco Siffredi in a straight(!) role. (Breillat prefers real erections, not that she dares do anything with them; in her last film, the leading man sported a prosthetic).
Here, Rocco looks amazingly like the late French star Patrick Dewaere (as he was in Psy in 1980) and that only makes things worse. One longs for someone with Dewaere’s talent, charisma and, above all, boisterous gusto. Not that he would have accepted such a pretentious exercise as this. (You can stop exercising now, Catherine – we now know you’re pretentious, you don’t have to keep hitting us over the head with it.... Une vrai jeune fille, Romance, Fat Girl, Sex Is Comedy, etc).
Rocco has the gall to compare himself to Harvey Keitel by saying that yeah, sure, a few other actors could have managed this role, notably Keitel, “who also puts his entire his soul into his work.”
Well, it’s true, Rocco often looks in pain (like the audience) and even manges to weep at one point (no, two), presumably upon realising how blue greenstuff he lost in the few weeks quaffing menstrual cocktails in Portugal.
Breillat, as usual, will compare her work with that of Pasolini and a Oshima. (Rather like comparing Ashton Kutcher to Cary Grant). She invariably invokes the great Oshima, apparently forgetting that he made electrifying use of what constitutes hardcore scenes in his art-core classic, In The Realm of the Senses. While she forever hovers at the edge, never daring to make such a leap...
The glimpse of a gay blow-job and the odd shot of Siffredi with an angry Little(!) Rocco is hardly hard (or art) core.
The lady with the Tampax, who is nude for almost the entire film, is the gorgeous Amira Casar. She has the profile (and the courage) of Monica Bellucci. She just needs a better fiolm fror both. This is her 25th movie in 15 years, she’s best known for the two Le verite si je mens comedies - the first won her a Cesar nomination.
She has a body double called Pauline Hunt for her genitalia close-ups - with and without blood.
We are, thankfully, spared any such close-up of Miss Hunt’s box when, after sifting through the garden shed, Rocco decides to insert the wooden staff of some gardening tool in her, leaving it poking out, sticking up in the air – the most ludicrous image in an increasing ludicrous film. It’s like a cutting from New Ways To Model Garden Tools.
The point of all this is... what exactly? I wish I could tell you.
The couple comprise a gay guy or, at least, he doesn’t fancy women, and a suicide-prone beauty who pays him to watch her. They do this for four nights in an empty house. They converse, no they simply speak in such monotones (so does Breillat's narration), they made me drowsy. Admittedly, my French is lousy but I just know - it’s that kind of a look-at-me-I’m-arty French flick – that they’re talking shit.
At one point, I even mused (not amused!) that they were quoting Mao’s little red at each other.
Other than that, the message is typically Breillat. Men are pricks and women are wonderful in their suffering. (Hey, I hear enough of that at home!)
The title? Oh yeah, the title....
Well, Madame Breillat has adapted her book called Pornocratie into a script for Rocco called Anatomie de l’enfer. Anatomy of Hell. Perfect, when you realise (it takes four minutes) that hell is exactly what this film is and that it should be avoided like crabs.
I call it The Red Bunny.
Bobby Dupea
Youch. I don’t think Breillat’s without ability whatsoever, but maybe this guy just reached a breaking point with her work. Sometimes, one trick wears thin and viewers just give up. Guess we’ll see when and if this one hits American shores.
"Moriarty" out.
