The Exterminating Angels

This movie is about a director who wants to make a film, with a plot which has never been done before. He tries to experiment with various unusual ways to push the boundaries of "what should be" or "what should'nt be". In spite of the warnings by his loved ones he gives himself up to his curiosity. He lets his lust control his actions. The lust forces him to venture forbidden territory (or taboo, as one might call it). His lust eventually, drives him to a place filled with deceit, pain and despair.

Overall I feel the movie is only worth watching for an audience who can cope with the darkness and the ill-feeling which the movie makes you feel. That is why I did not like the movie because I felt the story was not so brilliant and too strange to be very honest.

Sex is universal to every art in every time, in every culture. It's universal because it's as animal as every man is. So, no theme is more richly treated, and more thoroughly investigated as sex. That raises the bar of demand, in other words, if you want to do anything interesting that concerns sex you have only two choices:

-either you do something that, although not original updates somethings that had been previously done;

-you find any dark corner of sex, usually tied to other equally fascinating worlds, of the human mind or such; this film does nothing in any of the 2 options. it's as dull as its writer sounds. This i say taking in consideration the lines, and an interview i saw on the DVD extras.

Apparently this film was made as some sort of provocation against some sex related charges related to this director's previous film. I think he might see this as an exorcism or something that could be mapped into the realms of the "art" world. Some personal exploitation of the limits of voyeurism in sex; a man who studies female orgasm by watching (and filming) it. I suppose later in the process of developing this, Brisseau himself understood how thin the whole thing was, so he placed a couple of Wenders' borrowed angels, to add a layer of mysticism to the whole watching game and, i suppose, so we could identify with the more active angel, as a voyeur of the voyeur situations.

This could actually work, but only if the director was more interested in making a film, rather than looking like he masters the inner depth of the female orgasm. As it is, this is a shameless depiction of the female body, some women are really and genuinely appealing, but the whole work is just dishonest. I really would prefer to have this made into a softcore exploitative film, than this annoying piece. Anything Brass or Franco do is better than this.

My opinion: 1/5

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This film is nothing like as meaningful as I am sure the makers would have wished but neither is it tosh. Brisseau tells of a director who sets out to capture the beauty of the female nude during orgasm. Not interested in the porn actresses' rehearsed turns he seeks young women not used to performing the act so that he might thereby capture the 'mystical moments'. He also proposes that if she transgresses the norm she will more likely reach the maximum sensations. Hence, we get masturbation in a restaurant, in a hotel room with the door open, with other girls etc. I do not particularly take issue with any of this but I just don't think it's particularly profound. It is a slight theory which if proved does not really lead us anywhere. Where it does lead us of course is to the frank and pretty explicit presentation of some pretty erotic scenes. Not all bad then! Simple enough to start with this gradually turns into a melodrama involving the director's wife, the girls' partners and even the police and the ghost of his grandmother. Gradually we seem to loose sight of what seemed the film's only premise, but who knows maybe Brisseau really was making a film about the nature of love and how men and women are affected so differently.

The movie has an interesting theme, unfortunately it doesn't really make the most of it. And I'm not talking about nudity or sexuality here (plenty of that, although it is more for the lover of lesbian eroticism). We also have a problem with acting in this and believability, if you actually care for that.

It might be you only want to watch this for apparent reasons which is fine enough and as said, the movie does work. But if you are out for a coherent story, you almost get it here. With the movie following in the footsteps of the directors prior movie (this being called "part 2" of a loosely strung trilogy), it doesn't have the same characters or anything, but it does seem to have strong roles for women again. Although in this case a man has the lead role

I feel that I should watch the film again (which I will not, because I don't want to, because it was very disturbing, and although it was, I admit, exciting, physically, and I am definitely a woman who loves men, I don't want to see it again because it made me sad, disconsolate) before I give my point of view, which, by the way, I have never done before in this venue, but-- Postsefalu is correct: "the camera-eye is registering: passion,loneliness, madness and ... love." I saw this movie yesterday and what registered most with me today is the fact that the women were in love with the man who directed them. As was his wife. He should have taken the love he was offered. He lost everything because he was trying to turn it into something else--art? But I know nothing about art.