France, 2004 Director: Catherine Breillat
Stars: Amira Casar, Rocco Siffredi
A beautiful but nameless woman (Amira Casar) tries to kill herself in the toilets of a gay disco. One of the gay clubbers, a handsome and also nameless man (Italian porn superstar Rocco Siffredi), rescues her. Jaded and apparently quite ungreatful, the woman thanks the man with an offer of money to "watch her where she's unwatchable" - explore her female body up close and learn how its been, in her opinion, mapped by misogynist males as a landscape of repulsive, smelly horrors. She chooses him because he's gay, and therefore free, she believes, of hetero-male prejudices about what's erotic and what's not about the female body (she's obviously not the smartest woman in the world). Four nights of amazingly explicit explorations follow, as the woman's vagina hosts the handle of a pitchfork, a stone dildo, and the gay man's rock hard dick.
Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l'Enfer) is the epitome of the plot-free, abstract erotic French arthouse film. Whether or not that's a bad thing is up to you - I really enjoyed it, and it's only just over an hour long, so it's not the cigarettes-and-venetian-blinds water torture so many other films of this genre tend to be. It's well filmed, and fast, and the surrealism always tends to have a tongue heading slightly towards a cheek. The dialogue tends to skid all over the place, however, with thematic slogans like "because I'm a woman" used too early and too often. Breillat doesn't need to overlay the obvious with verbal clangers like that. She's made a mostly smart and sexy film, and so this damsel tied to the railway tracks, save her from the patriarchy before it's too late crap doesn't work at all. Does it ever?
The very laboured thesis of this film, that men are too repulsed by the workings of the female anatomy to connect with the female psyche, didn't quite ring true for me. I know heaps of straight guys who love pussy au naturel, the smellier the better. Apparently, fucking and going down during menstruation is a turn on for plenty of men as well. The only fear of the pussy a lot of guys hold is the fear they'll never get enough of it. But Casar's suicidal crypto-feminist has obviously never met pussy-worshipping men like these.
Also, straight men have a very hermetic sexual geography - their only hole is at the tip of their penis, and urine - probably the least offensive excretion in any case - can't come out during an erection. The occasional finger-in-the-bum is about as far as a lot of guys go, and unless their partner gets down underneath their balls, it doesn't matter when they last showered - a dick always tends to smell pretty much the same. A non-sweaty part of the body, it doesn't really have much of a smell at all, and it's external, and all-but sealed. Uncut guys, maybe, have just that little bit extra to worry about. If men see the female body as a smelly, problematic place then it's probably because comparatively, it is.
And since when was repugnance towards opposite sex genitalia a one way, anti-female street? How many guys struggle to get a blowjob from women turned off by cock, or the taste of cum?
I worry sometimes that my backside isn't clean, or in sex-mode - what if a hot guy with a nice cock gives me the eye two hours after I've had a five course Indian meal? Have I been infected with self-hate by the controlling gazes of others, or do I just find the idea of certain smells, noises or discharges during sex unpleasant and embarrassing? A bit of sweat, dirt or grease is hot, but I don't necessarily want shit on my sheets, in my pubes, and down the inside of my leg. It's got nothing to do with "gay self-loathing" - I just don't find it sexy. I imagine many women have a similar attitude to menstrual discharge and vaginal odors. What's wrong with wanting to feel sexy, or look alluring? And why make a person feel guilty or dirty for wanting to ogle sexy people rather than unattractive ones? The disingenuous hippy fantasy of everyone rolling around in polymorphous oblivion seems to be the guiding light of a lot of queer theory and feminism, with its wimp-centred quasi-Christian aim of moving the sexual goalposts to favour the ugly, the meek and the unsexy, and it has infected Anatomy of Hell.
Nevertheless the film compels with its arresting visual stylings and hardish-core sex scenes. Banned in Australia, Anatomy of Hell is a sometimes shockingly graphic erotic film. Erect (and big) penises abound, and after the first frank blowjob scene, salty white cum drips from the main character's lips. When the man forages around the woman's cunt and arse with his fingers, the camera catches the action in lingering close-up (a note before the opening credits advises us that in these scenes, a body double was used). There's rough fucking during her heavy flow menstruation that sees blood gushing everywhere, including all over his cock and stomach. Like the rest of the film, it's a nicely-shot eye-opener.
