Matt and Mara
$10.50
Dir. Catherine Breillat
2004, France, 77 min
Rated 18A
French with English subtitles
Adapted from Breillat’s novel Pornocracy, Anatomy of Hell follows a woman who meets a man in a gay disco and hires him for four consecutive nights, asking him to “watch me where I am unwatchable.”
Presented in partnership with Alliance Française du Manitoba. Generously sponsored by the Ambassade de France au Canada.
Content warning: This film contains challenging and/or triggering subject matter, including depictions of self harm, explicit nudity and graphic depictions of sex.
“The most original and perhaps the most disturbing thing about Breillat’s poetic treatise on gynephobia is its unique juxtaposition of the cerebral and the visceral. This is a most radical exercise in erotic body horror—and, pace David Cronenberg, it may be the mode’s ultimate example.” – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
“I often like to say that I am not scandalous but that I am a scandal, and that society has actually denied me the right to exist.”
This summer, the Dave Barber Cinematheque presents Female Perversions: The Films of Catherine Breillat, featuring four explicit, transgressive and emotionally ambiguous works – Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2001), Anatomy of Hell (2004), and Last Summer (2023).
Over the last three decades, Catherine Breillat has clinically charted sexuality and its intersections with power and intimacy. In her films, she treats sexual politics as philosophical and coldly analytical, confronting the viewer with the explicit taboos around the body. Her films explore the adolescent obsession with the loss of virginity, masochism, misogyny, and female sexuality. For Breillat, there is always an element of power involved in pleasure.
Transgressive and challenging, Female Perversions aims to explore the career of a singular and unapologetic filmmaker whose films examine the meaning of bodies from social, political and personal angles.
Presented in partnership with Alliance Française du Manitoba. Generously sponsored by the Ambassade de France au Canada.