Agent provocateur

Breillat frequently shows us the woman's pubis in glistening close-up. The movie's opening credits explain that a body double was used for these most explicit scenes, but it doesn't matter whose parts we're seeing: The intimacy of these close-ups is almost stifling at first, but we learn to relax into them.

Still, that kind of directness is bound to make some people uncomfortable. One gay critic had this to say: "Eeeuw." I wouldn't call that a misogynist response -- maybe it's femmephobic at worst. But while I don't think "Anatomy of Hell" has anything so clumsy as a thesis, I do think that critic's response proves Breillat's point exactly -- that the sexual essence of women is so foreign to men that revulsion is a part of their response to it. (Actually, that may be the very response she's hoping for.)

But Breillat is aware that that revulsion is felt by women as well, and not solely because of social conditioning. After all, our parts are mysterious to us, too: We can't get a good look at them without a mirror. (And I'll bet there are plenty of us who thought "Eeuw" the first time we saw what we really look like.) Our lovers are often more intimately acquainted with our hidden parts than we are.

Maybe that's why Siffredi's performance here is so moving. He and the woman have intercourse on the first night -- he's aroused by her in spite of himself -- and afterward, we see her sound asleep, while he weeps quietly at the foot of the bed. We don't really know what his tears are for. They could be a simple release, or it could be that he feels moved by her vulnerability (or identifies with it) in ways that he couldn't articulate if he tried.

Even so, his feelings for her and her womanhood are anything but tidy. At one point, his simmering resentment toward her causes him to retrieve a gardening tool from the shed and prop its stubby handle in her vagina as she sleeps -- maybe an acknowledgment that, even with all his magnificent manhood, he's all too easy to replace.

The surprise of "Anatomy of Hell" is that Siffredi's character is ultimately more vulnerable than the woman, because while she knows exactly what to expect from him, he's susceptible to her in ways he never could have predicted. Siffredi's performance is lovely, partly because of the languid expressiveness of his slightly droopy eyes. He's such a securely masculine presence that he doesn't need any phony macho affectations. (The performances he delivers for Breillat are the polar opposite of his rough porn persona.) The purity of Siffredi's sexual confidence hovers far outside any socially proscribed notion of what a man should be. He's so masculine he's almost feminine.

Although "Anatomy of Hell" at first seems to present women as aggrieved souls, it ultimately swerves around to assert the certainty of their power. There's something queenly about the way Casar drapes herself along the length of her bed. Even as she speaks of the vulnerability of womankind, she looks ready to rule the world. Breillat and her camera people (Yorgos Arvanitis, Guillaume Schiffman, Miquel Malherios and Susana Gomes) light Casar as if they'd wanted to paint her instead of commit her to film: Her skin has an unreal lunar glow, a visual metaphor for feminine sexual allure. The ocean that rages practically outside her doorstep may be rushing to get to her, or to escape her -- it's hard to say which.

Catherine Breillat is less a feminist filmmaker than an aggressively feminine one. I'm sure she does want to shock us with that bloody tampon cocktail. But she also reminds us that that blood -- which men of many cultures have used as evidence that women are "unclean" -- is the source of all human life.

Even though Breillat's movies can be joltingly distressing -- it took me days to recover fully from "Fat Girl" -- I always find something jubilant about them. Breillat's movies are always seriously alive. At the close of "Sex Is Comedy," as the end credits begin to roll, we see Parillaud-as-Breillat peeling and eating a banana with voracious delicacy. Relieved and delighted that the most difficult scene in her movie is behind her, she announces to the surrounding crew, "I think life's hilarious!" I don't doubt for a minute that Breillat does, too.

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