Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/08/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat, 2004)

Amira Casar and Rocco Siffredi in Anatomy of Hell

Cast: Amira Casar, Rocco Siffredi, voice of Catherine Breillat. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, based on her novel. Cinematography: Giorgos Avanitis, Guillaume Schiffman. Production design: Jean-Marie Millon, Pedro Sá. Film editing: Pascale Chavance.

I don't quite believe anyone who says they found Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell boring. There's certainly enough that's unforeseen in it to hold the attention of even the most jaded viewer. It may be that we expect better of Breillat, who has made her reputation on candid treatments of sex, especially female sexuality, so that the more novel transgressive elements of the film feel less like the work of a major director than of one who's out just to shock and/or disgust. And it may certainly be that the dialogue in the film feels like talk for talk's sake, a tiresome attempt to stimulate the mind as well as the body. The film also seems not to understand sexual pleasure and desire very well, especially where it comes to gay men. I'm not sure that it demonstrates homophobia on Breillat's part, as some have charged, so much as a wrong-headed feint at inclusivity. Still, so few films today give us much to talk about after viewing, so we ought to credit Breillat with an attempt at that at the very least.