Exterminating Angels

I thought this was a decent film and I understand where the director was getting at. It's not easy to talk about and can be read on different levels. It presents itself as a fairly straightforward, commercial film with all the necessary ingredients to summon a huge, mainly masculine, crowd. "The Exterminating Angels" tells the story of filmmaker François (Frédéric van den Driessche) who aims to make a film exploring female eroticism, during pre-production he put two women, Charlotte (Maroussia Dubreuil) and Julie (Lise Bellynck) to the test by filming them have sex, then a third joins, waitress Stéphanie (Marie Allan) in and they develop a close sexual bond. So much so that they begin to enjoy the thrill of having sex in front of François who they grow to covet. The relationship becomes dangerous when François discovers that temptation, jealousy and lust puts his film in jeopardy.

First of all, some may call me ignorant but I have no idea what the meaning of the angles are in this film? The symbolism slipped by me. They watch over the filmmaker and occasionally influence situations, other than that it's a mystery. Perhaps it's a statement about those that watch over us may also have the power to mess with us? Furthermore this film is an incredibly male-centred fantasy piece that pushes the envelope. It's a total "I wish" movie to see a bunch of ladies get it on? It seemed like Brisseau was playing out his fantasy by proxy through the character François or to a certain extent using the character as a means to justify what he asks women to do for his films. Some may call it sophisticated art while others porn but the bottom line is that the film does features some erotic scenes, many of which are border-line porn. Nothing to the extremes as seen in the tastefully bad "Baise-Moi" (2000) hardcore porn masquerading as art-house cult cinema, this film is at least tasteful in it's depictions of lesbian interactions, well as tasteful as they can be anyway.

I also found the film to be incredibly slow to an artful degree, if it wasn't for the occasional bouts of sex that broke up the mundane and occasionally pretentious dialogue this would have been a totally mind-numbing experience. I even felt that the performances by the young female cast members to be totally void of any emotion even when engaging with themselves it was like watching robots programmed to perform a specific function, this film is supposed to be about exploring female eroticism (at least that's what the character of François was going for) yet I felt that these girls didn't connect with one another. What I did like was the film's noir tone and visual style is rather impressive and the film's themes become somewhat clearer when looked at in this light, the manipulative undertones surface and the complexity of this film's core is revealed, however at the end of the day "The Exterminating Angels" is too art house for the art house crowd and not explicit enough for the porno crowd...it lays in a strange middle ground.

Ironically, The Exterminating Angels seems to be a critique on making sexually explicit and arousing films, but at the same time it certainly is one. It just so happens to be the highest quality of its ilk that I've seen since perhaps The Dreamers. Looking briefly at other recent movies that The Exterminating Angels may be compared to (i.e. 9 Songs, Shortbus) it isn't as graphic and it strictly involves female sexuality and nudity. There is a massive amount of nudity in The Exterminating Angels, but only a few shots go over the line in terms of acceptable content in mainstream American films. Some angles in The Exterminating Angels show absolutely every part of the actresses' bodies. I felt it was justified given the fundamentally sexual subject matter and there were actually many opportunities in this movie to show even more nudity but it didn't, so I'm not sure we can definitely call it gratuitous. It definitely would've been a lesser film without it, and I mean that as both a stern critic and as a libidinous male.

The Exterminating Angels is about François, a filmmaker who needs to find several uninhibited actresses who are not afraid to appear in his explicit semi-improvisational film. He wants actresses and not porn stars because porn stars have been there and will not transfer effectively to his vision of taboos and unexplored female sexuality. In other words, the actresses have not been exploited yet and that is what he wants to show. We get the feeling that Francois is a very serious filmmaker.

François is visited by his dead Grandmother in the middle of the night and she warns him of the future. As François begins his search for the right actresses, he comes across a girl who willingly experiences a real climax at her audition, and it is her first time ever. François requested she fake it but she went right ahead anyway and explained that she did it because the idea of doing so in this setting is what turned her on. François, fascinated by this exchange, decides to explore why this happens. But he never chose that girl for a part in his film, so he essentially and unwittingly used her. He does eventually get the appropriate actresses and relationships with them develop and trust issues surface in no time. One of them even falls in love with François but he doesn't know anything about this, as to him he's just making a movie. Being behind the camera is a loveless experience to him but being in front of it is an incredibly intense sexual exploration to his actresses, and they are not stable people to begin with.

There were also two apparitional girls that indicate no longer being angels, but not quite witches yet either who follow François around. One of them even helps to originally persuade one of the three actresses to approach François about a role in the film. In the end they seem to both be conflicted about what François has done to these girls. That element coupled with the extra random and surreal dialogue that accompanies some of the more unnatural scenes perplexed me a bit. There are certainly some aspects that were artier than I think they needed to be but perhaps I need to see the film again. Also, I can't help but think this is a self-indulgent effort from director Jean-Claude Brisseau. Taking that into account it does come off as a bit pompous, and the near accusations I have that Brisseau is guilty of some pretentious elements is certainly consistent with that. All of that aside, this is still a fiercely determined and erotic film that is well done, brave, and provoking on many levels.

Director Jean-Claude Brisseau seems to be using this movie to proclaim his innocence after being on the sticky end of a fair amount of criticism following his first "female masturbation movie" Choses Secrets. So here he's showing us what went on behind the camera, supposedly, and telling us that really he's been misunderstood and wrongly accused. Well, I suppose if you can get a budget for what is essentially a 100+ minute essay on "why I'm really a nice guy" then more power to you.

French movies, in years gone by, often seemed to be on the edge of tipping over into self-indulgence and wilful obscurantism. Sad to say, this movie is guilty of the same thing. In a way you can almost imagine it inspired by Peter Greenaway - though there's none of Greenaway's elaborate framing, just his penchant for obscure symbolism.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is that it is pursuing the director's own personal obsession with female sexuality in much the same way as Choses Secrets (and later A l'Aventure) without actually developing beyond what was explored in the earlier film. Yes, it's charming to watch pretty women masturbate and Brisseau is to be commended for seeing sexuality as something potentially ecstatic and mystical, rather than merely mundane. But he explores this trope relentlessly through the narrow passageway of female masturbation and in the end the corridor is simply too narrow to enable him to develop his theme adequately. Although it seems difficult to imagine in the abstract, the fact is that after a while the repetition is simply boring. The director lacks the breadth and depth of vision necessary to move beyond the obvious. In the end it feels like we're watching a big-budget art school project where the ambition is much greater than the talent available.