Exterminating Angels

Director: Jean-Claude Brisseau
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 2.0

Essentially a 'companion piece' to Secret Things, 'recreating' the voyeuristic casting sessions of that first film that led the director to get in trouble with the law - the point of this being that, like Nietzsche once said, in love and in war women are more barbarous than men. While Brisseau knows how to turn on the Sexy Time - the three-way lesbian masturbation scene is stunning (and this is coming from someone who doesn't especially care for girl-on-girl action at all) - his characters are wooden and dialogue flat (or laughable: does he know how funny "I am the devil's beloved" sounds?) not to mention that the pivotal confrontation scene that takes place later pops out of nowhere. I do follow the filmmaker's main point about the problems that go along with getting young women to reveal their hidden desires to you for the first time (and the emotions that follow), but if this is intended to be a cautionary tale, it's more for the audience and less for the auteur himself. Brisseau and Catherine Breillat had to have been separated at birth.