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Anatomy of Hell (2003)

tomatometer

26

Average Rating: 3.6/10
Reviews Counted: 34
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 25

Ponderous, pretentious, and -- considering the subject matter -- dull.

27

Average Rating: 3.7/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 11

Ponderous, pretentious, and -- considering the subject matter -- dull.

audience

38

liked it
Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 3,074

My Rating

Movie Info

A lonely and dejected woman (Amira Casar) learns that only when all inhibitions are cast aside will she be able to truly understand the truth about how men see women in this erotically charged exploration of sexuality from controversial director Catherine Breillat. Teetering on the edge of overwhelming ennui, the woman pays a man (Rocco Siffredi) to join her for a daring, four-day exploration of sexuality in which both reject all convention and smash all boundaries while locked away from society

Jan 25, 2005

Tartan Films

Cast

All Critics (39) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (10) | Rotten (25) | DVD (6)

The movie strongly suggests that to be gay is to be a misogynist, that all men wish to do violence to women and that being female is the same as being miserable.

November 12, 2004 Full Review Source: Toronto Star | Comment
Toronto Star
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Forget the Anatomy, this is just plain Hell.

November 12, 2004 Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | Comment
Globe and Mail
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Plays like porn dubbed by bitter deconstructionist theoreticians.

November 12, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comment
Chicago Sun-Times
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A ponderous but very, very explicit exploration of gender roles and fears that frequently seems like a parody of the genre.

November 11, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | Comment
Chicago Tribune
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Ultimately less reminiscent of similarly themed efforts like Last Tango in Paris than of an explicit health education training film.

November 4, 2004 Comment
Hollywood Reporter
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No one takes the fun out of sex like Catherine Breillat.

November 3, 2004 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly | Comment
Entertainment Weekly
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A waste of cinema, and of precious time.

August 19, 2006 Full Review Source: Cinema Writer | Comment
Cinema Writer

More than you ever wanted to know about the vagina, which isn't good enough for Catherine Breillat.

January 25, 2005 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

The ultimate lesson being taught isn't how homosexuality can be transposed to kinky hetero sex games.

January 24, 2005 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

I hate this movie, but only because it hated me first.

January 16, 2005 Full Review Source: EricDSnider.com | Comment
EricDSnider.com

Breillat reduces sexuality to the basest coupling of body parts, and Anatomy of Hell reduces film to freak-show voyeurism.

January 7, 2005 Full Review Source: Salt Lake Tribune | Comment
Salt Lake Tribune

Vagina dialogue this may be, but it seems much more like a bunch of arse.

November 26, 2004 Full Review Source: Movie Gazette | Comment

One of the most groundbreaking films in recent memory in terms of both the explicitness of its sexuality and its commitment to such an austere intellectual discourse.

November 23, 2004 Full Review Source: BBC | Comment

Given that [Breillat's] premise is that all men are guilty and all women are victims in the same manner, the film becomes a ridiculous socio-political rant, not a drama about the complexity of real life.

November 12, 2004 Full Review Source: Jam! Movies | Comment
Jam! Movies
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Anatomy of Hell

Awfully, sickening as it's shocking of two strangers explore the boundaries of sex and bad taste in this explicit and unseemly French import.

June 3, 2007
deano
Dean McKenna

Super Reviewer

In "Anatomy of Hell", a heterosexual woman(Amira Casar) begins slitting her wrists in a nightclub bathroom when she is interrupted by a gay man(Rocco Siffredi). He escorts her to a clinic where she is patched up. They become acquainted and she invites him back to her place to view her in all her intimate glory. He

November 11, 2005
Harlequin68
Walter M.

Super Reviewer

    1. The Woman: The ocean, despite its misleading male image, rolled in the darkness like a bitch in heat. This ocean, like a woman, could engulf you and make you vanish into its loins... So I felt trapped by a kind of sorcery of the signs and obscene sounds of nature. Surrounded by the pleading moans of the weak, only I was strong... Helpless against the whole world.
    – Submitted by Paul N (2 months ago)

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