Her latest, Anatomy of Hell, doesn't so much straddle the fine line between art and porn as balance, bleeding, on the knife's edge between trenchant and pretentious.

| Jun 28, 2013

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

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 24, 2005

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 23, 2004

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.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 12, 2004

Forget the Anatomy, this is just plain Hell.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 12, 2004

Plays like porn dubbed by bitter deconstructionist theoreticians.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 12, 2004

A ponderous but very, very explicit exploration of gender roles and fears that frequently seems like a parody of the genre.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 11, 2004

Ultimately less reminiscent of similarly themed efforts like Last Tango in Paris than of an explicit health education training film.

Full Review | Nov 4, 2004

No one takes the fun out of sex like Catherine Breillat.

| Original Score: D | Nov 3, 2004

Breillat uses this man and woman on a bed (sometimes only he is clothed, and sometimes the two of them are naked) as a way of exploring the meaning of women's bodies from social, political and personal angles, instead of purely sensual ones.

Full Review | Oct 20, 2004

Breillat, as usual, leaves us gasping.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 15, 2004

Ranks high on the squirm meter. But, unlike in most of [Breillat's] earlier work, there's no emotional payoff.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 15, 2004

The good news: Real-life porn star Siffredi turns out to be a terrific actor. Who knew? The bad news: The scene with the garden implement. The scene with the red cocktail. The scene with ... I can't go on.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 15, 2004

Once again, [Breillat] gives us a man and a woman engaged in a bruising slugfest hinged to sexual difference.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 14, 2004

In her latest feature, sexual provocatrix Catherine Breillat turns a philosophical speculum on gender relations to perverse (and perversely elegant) effect.

Full Review | Oct 12, 2004

A mere parade of shock images meant to free us from our bourgeois illusions -- and since narrative engagement appears to be one of those sins, it's impossible to find a foothold.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 1, 2004

In her clinical yet stately manner Breillat is largely -- though not wholly -- successful.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 24, 2004

Unless you buy the obnoxious premise that men in general, and gay men in particular, loathe women, you may find yourself thinking, 'Buck up, dear!' and concluding that this is a filmmaker whose desire to shock exceeds her capacity for interesting thought.

Full Review | Sep 22, 2004

Breillat is militantly in favor of personal and intellectual freedom -- and that aspect of her mission as an artist is laudable. But it's the way she expresses it on film that lends itself to giggles and guffaws.

Full Review | Sep 21, 2004