Anatomy Of Hell (Catherine Breillat, 2004)
There is one point in this film that the woman (the characters are unnamed) asks if she lost dignity by doing that in front of the man. I won't specify what that is but it hints at the theme. This is a film a bit about exposing that which is made private largely because of the fears and insecurities of man.
Some have accused this film of homophobia, presumably because the woman recruits a gay man to kind of torture with her body and implies to some degree that homosexuality is caused by male revulsion with the female body/female sexuality. To the degree that some gay guys do have an eww, lady parts reaction, it is clearly caused by their sexuality, not the cause of it. So it's a bit weird, but I think the role of having the guy be gay is to remove sexual desire from the frame to talk more broadly.
If I viewed this film as speaking at a personal level, I'd actually be willing to accuse it of being anti-male, because it would be unfair to accuse this individual man of mankind's sins without any indication that he deserves it. But this is a symbolic film, likely one of the reasons for the generic character titles. It really is man and woman as broad groups, ultimately commenting on patriarchy.
Though it would never happen, this film would actually be a useful component of sex education (at a much older age naturally). In commenting frankly on various things; body hair, periods, sex toys, etc that are seen as revolting/threatening to any male ideas of virginal (adolescent) purity and ownership, I think it does quite a service in forcing male viewers to deal with these things and hopefully work toward overcoming them. Though the film has its actress completely naked virtually through the whole film and the actor often naked, and it includes some rather close up views, the most shocking element here is in its explicit depiction, in flashback, of a childhood game of doctor, which I suppose could either be the first moment of revulsion or a contrasting moment of purity.
Anyway, I feel like there are details that I wasn't picking up on. Sometimes the film felt like, while I was understanding the individual words, when put together I lost the meaning that almost felt like it was occurring off frame. Still, I found a great deal of interest in the film's style here. Of course having jumped out of order to watch this film I kind of pity losing the steady chronological progression for Breillat that took her from the rather lacking filmmaker of her first two films to this success (and the very competent hand that provided Bluebeard, which I had seen prior to the marathon). At least this reassures me that Beillat isn't one to write off.
4/5