As nearly as I could tell, this film is about the heavy cosmic price that's extracted (only sometimes, unfortunately) from the clueless. The film's filmmaker, Francois, wants to make a film about orgasms. He doesn't want porn stars because they might fake orgasms, so he goes out and finds, uh, "real" actresses. Because he's clueless, Francois doesn't notice that his actresses, not to mention his wife and just about everybody else, are waving enormous red flags, along with sirens and flashing danger lights, in his direction. And, because he's an eedgit, Francois eventually has very bad things happen to him, but not as bad as they could be because he's such a nice eedgit that even one of his exterminating angels cuts him some ill-advised slack. Meanwhile, around him swirl a variety of pretentiously mysterious signs and apparitions that describe the amount of effort that heaven, or whatever, is spending to demolish Francois. Not least of these signs are the cryptic messages that mirror those sent via radio to the French Resistance during WW2. Do these signify that the relationship between the sexes is an undeclared war? Who knows. Cocteau used them much better in Orphee. However, and this is a big however, this film has some very hot women having sex with each other. French (or Belgian) women -- yum! So there it is -- a pretentious film about the downfall of a bonehead, filled to the brim with luscious women. Your call.
25 Reviews
Pointless and Pretentious Eroticism and Voyeurism
claudio_carvalho24 March 2009
The French filmmaker François (Frédéric van den Driessche) decides to make a movie about female pleasure and break of taboos in sex. He interviews many young women about their secret fantasies and proposes auditions, with each woman naked and masturbating in front of a camera until they reach orgasm. He finally casts Julie (Lise Bellynck), the unstable Charlotte (Maroussia Dubreuil) and the compulsive liar Stéphanie (Marie Allan) to the lead roles and creates a sexual tension among them in a threesome. The relationship with the three actresses affects his marriage, while two fallen angels and the spirit of his protective grandmother follow him.
"Les Anges Exterminateurs" is a pointless and pretentious soft-porn with lots of eroticism and voyeurism. The movie is pure exploitation, with the exposition of the gorgeous unknown naked actresses, and disguised of "art-movie" with the beautiful cinematography and the omnipresence of two fallen angels which existence is never explained and the ghost of the director's grandmother. It is funny to see intellectual explanations to such a silly and messy story of female orgasm. My vote is five.
Title (Brazil): "Anjos Exterminadores" ("Exterminating Angels")
"Les Anges Exterminateurs" is a pointless and pretentious soft-porn with lots of eroticism and voyeurism. The movie is pure exploitation, with the exposition of the gorgeous unknown naked actresses, and disguised of "art-movie" with the beautiful cinematography and the omnipresence of two fallen angels which existence is never explained and the ghost of the director's grandmother. It is funny to see intellectual explanations to such a silly and messy story of female orgasm. My vote is five.
Title (Brazil): "Anjos Exterminadores" ("Exterminating Angels")
Never Let Your Lust Control You
kb_xtc14 December 2011
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.
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.
The Emperor's New Clothes
lor_1 April 2009
I agree with most negative IMDb reviews of Brisseau's film, and want to take the discussion one step further: the booking of this film (and his next film) at Lincoln Center in NYC, as well as becoming a Cannes Film Festival selection, showing how easily a phony like Brisseau can hoodwink the gatekeepers of the international festival circuit.
On all key points, Exterminating Angels (title a la Bunuel) is a failure: originality: Zero; writing: Zero; realization: Zero; self-serving content: 100%.
On the DVD, Brisseau is interviewed alongside his collaborator (dating back to his humble super 8mm beginnings) Maria Luisa Garcia by a French critic who comically looks like Bill Gates -what Gates might have become if he'd gone to some Film School instead of studying math and science at Harvard. They discuss the evolution of the film's screenplay, and it becomes evident that what started as an unapologetic defense of Brisseau's sexual harassment activities on his just-previous film Choses Secretes, was elevated to pretentiousness by the insertion of fantasy elements STOLEN whole cloth from Jean Cocteau's classic 1950 film Orphée. The voice-over recitations by Brisseau are familiar to any art-house fan of the Cocteau work, allusions to the radio transmissions from the Underground during WW II. Since every film student and film buff over a certain age has seen Orpheé and absorbed it as perhaps THE art-house film of all time, I don't know how Brisseau thought he could get away with this ripoff.
The screenplay is extremely poor, with the director/hero repetitiously going through a gee-whiz, do women have orgasms? approach that is ludicrous. Structurally, it is reminiscent of the "white-coat" earliest hardcore porn films at the end of the 1960s, when sex had to be treated in fake-documentary fashion to escape censorship (before the semi-documentary style I Am Curious (Yellow) was famously cleared by the Supreme Court, thus opening the floodgates for modern porn). Brisseau as interviewed is proud as a peacock of his dialogue, which he says he adapts from run-throughs and meetings with the cast, but it is a mass of boring clichés.
The casting of the actor playing the Brisseau-like director in the film is a real mistake no one seems to have noticed -he looks a lot like the famous American porn director/star Paul Thomas, known as PT to his crew. Thomas has made many hundreds of adult films and in several of them he portrays a director working on a sex film project, closely resembling the format of what Brisseau is doing here. It's easy to imagine mainstream fans not picking up on this, but perhaps Brisseau can claim ignorance of Thomas's work, though I doubt it.
Brisseau works with a budget most porn directors (not the makers of epics like Pirates) would die for, yet his lighting and framing of the sex scenes here is remote and unimaginative, ultimately failing to "deliver the goods". Unlike his compatriot Catherine Breillat, he does not feature male actors in sex scenes (no ever erect Rocco Siffredi on call), avoiding the censorship problems of hardcore footage. Though both films are about lesbian sex, he also carefully avoids the paraphernalia, such as dildos and strap-ons, of hardcore lesbian sex films. Julie at one point holds up to the camera a small egg-shaped device she claims to use as a masturbation device, but it is not visible during the subsequent auto-erotic scene, again rendering the material softcore and as usual, simulated.
The resulting package is aimed squarely at the festival set, an international group of cineastes who live the life of jet setters (sort of), showing new films by mainly esoteric but also anxious-to-self-promote mainstreamers, throwing gala parties, and holding endlessly boring (I've walked out on enough in my lifetime) q&a sessions, on a circuit that has expanded in recent decades to something of a cottage industry. Cannes was invented 70 years ago as a gimmick to promote the town during the off-season, and the idea has spread far afield, to the Hamptons and (courtesy of Robert De Niro) even TriBeCa in my neck of the woods. Many films (and filmmakers) never escape from the festival route, showing at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, Edinburgh, Sundance and hundreds of other places, but worn out (or deemed unworthy) by the time it comes for theatrical distribution. The schmoes who booked this one at Cannes, and both this one and his next at Lincoln Center, are not-so-closet voyeurs: the so-called art film has always had a thread of sexploitation about it. (Recall that the most successful art films in the 1950s imported to the U.S were sexy Bergman ("Monika") and other Scandi product, then Bitter Rice, Lollobrigida, Loren and finally endless Brigitte Bardot vehicles.) The first hardcore porn film shown at Lincoln Center was a pseudo-docu Exhibition which I remember seeing back in 1975 -a piece of junk, still in circulation on DVD to bore a new generation of unsuspecting fans. The tastemakers of this "elite" side of the film industry are easily bamboozled by a fakir like Brisseau, with his embarrassingly undercooked combination of art & exploitation.
On all key points, Exterminating Angels (title a la Bunuel) is a failure: originality: Zero; writing: Zero; realization: Zero; self-serving content: 100%.
On the DVD, Brisseau is interviewed alongside his collaborator (dating back to his humble super 8mm beginnings) Maria Luisa Garcia by a French critic who comically looks like Bill Gates -what Gates might have become if he'd gone to some Film School instead of studying math and science at Harvard. They discuss the evolution of the film's screenplay, and it becomes evident that what started as an unapologetic defense of Brisseau's sexual harassment activities on his just-previous film Choses Secretes, was elevated to pretentiousness by the insertion of fantasy elements STOLEN whole cloth from Jean Cocteau's classic 1950 film Orphée. The voice-over recitations by Brisseau are familiar to any art-house fan of the Cocteau work, allusions to the radio transmissions from the Underground during WW II. Since every film student and film buff over a certain age has seen Orpheé and absorbed it as perhaps THE art-house film of all time, I don't know how Brisseau thought he could get away with this ripoff.
The screenplay is extremely poor, with the director/hero repetitiously going through a gee-whiz, do women have orgasms? approach that is ludicrous. Structurally, it is reminiscent of the "white-coat" earliest hardcore porn films at the end of the 1960s, when sex had to be treated in fake-documentary fashion to escape censorship (before the semi-documentary style I Am Curious (Yellow) was famously cleared by the Supreme Court, thus opening the floodgates for modern porn). Brisseau as interviewed is proud as a peacock of his dialogue, which he says he adapts from run-throughs and meetings with the cast, but it is a mass of boring clichés.
The casting of the actor playing the Brisseau-like director in the film is a real mistake no one seems to have noticed -he looks a lot like the famous American porn director/star Paul Thomas, known as PT to his crew. Thomas has made many hundreds of adult films and in several of them he portrays a director working on a sex film project, closely resembling the format of what Brisseau is doing here. It's easy to imagine mainstream fans not picking up on this, but perhaps Brisseau can claim ignorance of Thomas's work, though I doubt it.
Brisseau works with a budget most porn directors (not the makers of epics like Pirates) would die for, yet his lighting and framing of the sex scenes here is remote and unimaginative, ultimately failing to "deliver the goods". Unlike his compatriot Catherine Breillat, he does not feature male actors in sex scenes (no ever erect Rocco Siffredi on call), avoiding the censorship problems of hardcore footage. Though both films are about lesbian sex, he also carefully avoids the paraphernalia, such as dildos and strap-ons, of hardcore lesbian sex films. Julie at one point holds up to the camera a small egg-shaped device she claims to use as a masturbation device, but it is not visible during the subsequent auto-erotic scene, again rendering the material softcore and as usual, simulated.
The resulting package is aimed squarely at the festival set, an international group of cineastes who live the life of jet setters (sort of), showing new films by mainly esoteric but also anxious-to-self-promote mainstreamers, throwing gala parties, and holding endlessly boring (I've walked out on enough in my lifetime) q&a sessions, on a circuit that has expanded in recent decades to something of a cottage industry. Cannes was invented 70 years ago as a gimmick to promote the town during the off-season, and the idea has spread far afield, to the Hamptons and (courtesy of Robert De Niro) even TriBeCa in my neck of the woods. Many films (and filmmakers) never escape from the festival route, showing at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, Edinburgh, Sundance and hundreds of other places, but worn out (or deemed unworthy) by the time it comes for theatrical distribution. The schmoes who booked this one at Cannes, and both this one and his next at Lincoln Center, are not-so-closet voyeurs: the so-called art film has always had a thread of sexploitation about it. (Recall that the most successful art films in the 1950s imported to the U.S were sexy Bergman ("Monika") and other Scandi product, then Bitter Rice, Lollobrigida, Loren and finally endless Brigitte Bardot vehicles.) The first hardcore porn film shown at Lincoln Center was a pseudo-docu Exhibition which I remember seeing back in 1975 -a piece of junk, still in circulation on DVD to bore a new generation of unsuspecting fans. The tastemakers of this "elite" side of the film industry are easily bamboozled by a fakir like Brisseau, with his embarrassingly undercooked combination of art & exploitation.
Kitsch plus Cocteau
bcrumpacker12 June 2011
French film makers are prone to mixing banal philosophy and soft core porn. Their tiresome philosophies of pleasure are ALWAYS mere justification for voyeurism and mental masturbation for the predominantly male viewers, some of whom evidently hope that their wives and girlfriends will be stimulated too. They can thus escape the horrors of monogamy, if only in their minds. This transparently false justification is the essence of kitsch. On an intellectual level this film is no better than Exit To Eden, which also justified voyeurism and diluted forms of perversion with the same pretentious twaddle. But at least we are spared from seeing men in G strings and Rosie O'Donnell in a black corset and fishnet stockings. The borrowings from Orphee are obvious. Death is a sinister beauty, corrupt police do her work, and coded radio messages appear at random. Even the title borrows from Bunuel. However, little is done with these elements. They are tiny bits of brain candy for the critics, like finding Waldo. We do see some pretty girls, but they are mostly insane. BOTTOM LINE: For men who need a jump start.
sets out to capture the beauty of the female nude during orgasm
christopher-underwood30 January 2008
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.
Blurring the Line Between Porno and Art; Porno wins again
rmbarge19 July 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Since the legalization of hardcore pornography -- which I'll define narrowly here as filming genitals being manipulated to orgasm with the primary effect of sexually exciting the viewer -- there has been a constant tension between pornography and "legitimate" depiction of sexual conduct on camera, that is, actual sexual conduct graphically filmed, in order to make some greater philosophical or artistic point, so compelling that the message outweighs the sexual titillation.
(I realize I haven't done any better a job with these definitions than anyone else. Oh well.) Whether any film will bridge the two genres successfully, or whether it's even possible, I don't know. I do know that this one fails. It comes off as porno that has been dressed up with a tissue-thin veneer of pretense to psychological or social commentary, perhaps hoping that it can be shown in art-movie theaters. I'm not going to address the apologists for this waste of celluloid. The effect of this film is depression without elucidation, a result in which only some avant-garde critics seem to find any legitimate purpose.
It does manage to avoid some degree of cheesiness, but sacrifices any sort of joy or loopy humor. It's below pornography. It's the intellectualization of sexual predation. All it celebrates is the right of women to be stupid and self-destructive enough to masturbate and perform lesbian sexual acts on camera for money.
(I realize I haven't done any better a job with these definitions than anyone else. Oh well.) Whether any film will bridge the two genres successfully, or whether it's even possible, I don't know. I do know that this one fails. It comes off as porno that has been dressed up with a tissue-thin veneer of pretense to psychological or social commentary, perhaps hoping that it can be shown in art-movie theaters. I'm not going to address the apologists for this waste of celluloid. The effect of this film is depression without elucidation, a result in which only some avant-garde critics seem to find any legitimate purpose.
It does manage to avoid some degree of cheesiness, but sacrifices any sort of joy or loopy humor. It's below pornography. It's the intellectualization of sexual predation. All it celebrates is the right of women to be stupid and self-destructive enough to masturbate and perform lesbian sexual acts on camera for money.
Not a bad moment, though...
doctorrugger24 September 2006
Warning: Spoilers
I guess you've got a number of French writers at IMDb, and the global rating of "Les Anges" is good (6,6 for 19 votes : it's better than most French films I guess). Nevertheless none dared to write even a brief comment on this "thing". I will try to. If you don't like watching young, very desirable, girls playing with themselves under the table of a fancy restaurant, this film is not for you. If you're not attracted by beautifully filmed saphic loves in a hotel corridor, this film is not for you.
That should leave plenty people as potential public but has the film a point in itself, or is it only a gorgeous sex show ? The answer is complex for Brisseau never hide that his main interest is filming female orgasm, true or perfectly played. He was jailed for having "forced" actresses to masturbate in front of his camera on the pretext that they were casted for his next film. Unfortunately, all the girls were not kept for the cast...and some sued him . Les Anges is therefore a pro domo plea where Brisseau explains that his objectives were of clearly artistic nature, and not mere voyeurism . This debate is at the center of the film, more or less drawn into a ludicrous scenario, and deserves all our attention. Anyway, I shall remember "les Anges" as some of the "hottest" films ever, and that's certainly worth the price of a ticket.
That should leave plenty people as potential public but has the film a point in itself, or is it only a gorgeous sex show ? The answer is complex for Brisseau never hide that his main interest is filming female orgasm, true or perfectly played. He was jailed for having "forced" actresses to masturbate in front of his camera on the pretext that they were casted for his next film. Unfortunately, all the girls were not kept for the cast...and some sued him . Les Anges is therefore a pro domo plea where Brisseau explains that his objectives were of clearly artistic nature, and not mere voyeurism . This debate is at the center of the film, more or less drawn into a ludicrous scenario, and deserves all our attention. Anyway, I shall remember "les Anges" as some of the "hottest" films ever, and that's certainly worth the price of a ticket.
Dull
kenjha12 January 2008
A French filmmaker interviews a bunch of women to get them to do a screen test for a movie he's making about female orgasm. Meanwhile, there are a couple of fallen angels who appear and disappear randomly and apparently can influence the pervert filmmaker's life. Somehow the filmmaker's dead grandmother is also involved, but it's never quite clear what she or the angels have to do with the filmmaker's attempt to make a porno movie. This is an incredibly dull movie - even the sex scenes are boring. There's a lot of pretentious talk, but nobody says anything interesting. Reading the subtitles becomes tiresome. There is hardly any plot and the film moves at a snail's pace
A man in search of something
dbborroughs3 September 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Fictionalized story based on the preparation the director went through making his previous film. The story concerns the director talking to women and auditioning them by having them masturbate or engage in lesbian sex for their on screen role.The women open up to him and during the try outs he finds, at times the women, while clearly enjoying themselves can't always give him what he wants (what ever that is). I'm not sure what its all about or what the point was but I really enjoyed it both times I've seen it now. A funny sexy off kilter film with spirits and apparitions wandering through it, this is plainly adult viewing. I liked it and its seemingly frank adult discussions of sex (though I would love any women to tel me how true the feelings of the women in this film are). Worth a look
Boring
etrenkamp12 March 2007
My girlfriend and I saw this at the IFC in NYC on Friday night. I went to film school, she studied French in college, we both loved Short Bus - we thought this would be fun date movie. Man, were we wrong.
As a film that's trying to be "art" it humorlessly apes just about every art film convention from the early days of Bergman to Wenders Wings of Desire. It is literally a shopping list of art film cliché's. That in itself would not be a crime if the film's treatment of these cliché's wasn't so boring. As well, the script is mediocre at best. Maybe this is due to a bad translation, but my girl, who speaks French, told me the translation was fairly accurate. And cinematagraphicaly, the film is just shot badly. Many shots are ackwardly framed and staged. It reminded me of Kevin Smith's Clerks, only at least Clerks had a strong story and clever script that over came it's tech limitations. This whole film just feels slightly less than mediocre on every level.
As for the story, the director wants us to believe that his doppleganger in the film is observing these woman play out their erotic fantasies because he doesn't understand female pleasure. But it's obvious that he enjoyed watching three girls get naked and screw each other. Just because he didn't touch them doesn't mean he didn't enjoy it egotistically. Yet the film never holds him accountable for this. He is presented as a victim of crazy actresses, an unsympathetic wife, a corrupt judicial system, and ultimately a victim of fate or divinity itself. The film seems to ask us to envy his power at getting these girls to kink it out in front of him at his beck and call and at the same time we are suppose to sympathize at what a good husband, artist, and father figure he is and how nobody understands what a victim he really is. It just doesn't work. Apparently, the events of the film are based on a real situation that happened to the film's director. This story sounds like something a philandering husband would tell his wife about being taken to a strip club. "No, dear, I didn't enjoy it all. I spent the whole time talking with the girls about Hobbes and Locke." Bullsh!t. Also, there is a lot of talk about taboos in the film. Apparently, the director's idea of taboo is having sex in a hotel room. Oh, how daring! Lastly, there are two fairly sexy sequences in the film. However, they are almost completely ruined by the film's score. Every time the girls start to get naked, this bizarre 80's horror film score comes on the soundtrack. This combined with the bad writing and staging just kills any feelings of arousal you may have. Throughout the screening people would just get up and leave. And when the final "tragic" moments of the film were played out the whole theatre was laughing at how bad it was. The only thing anyone was talking about as we filed out into the lobby was how much we wanted our money and time back.
As a film that's trying to be "art" it humorlessly apes just about every art film convention from the early days of Bergman to Wenders Wings of Desire. It is literally a shopping list of art film cliché's. That in itself would not be a crime if the film's treatment of these cliché's wasn't so boring. As well, the script is mediocre at best. Maybe this is due to a bad translation, but my girl, who speaks French, told me the translation was fairly accurate. And cinematagraphicaly, the film is just shot badly. Many shots are ackwardly framed and staged. It reminded me of Kevin Smith's Clerks, only at least Clerks had a strong story and clever script that over came it's tech limitations. This whole film just feels slightly less than mediocre on every level.
As for the story, the director wants us to believe that his doppleganger in the film is observing these woman play out their erotic fantasies because he doesn't understand female pleasure. But it's obvious that he enjoyed watching three girls get naked and screw each other. Just because he didn't touch them doesn't mean he didn't enjoy it egotistically. Yet the film never holds him accountable for this. He is presented as a victim of crazy actresses, an unsympathetic wife, a corrupt judicial system, and ultimately a victim of fate or divinity itself. The film seems to ask us to envy his power at getting these girls to kink it out in front of him at his beck and call and at the same time we are suppose to sympathize at what a good husband, artist, and father figure he is and how nobody understands what a victim he really is. It just doesn't work. Apparently, the events of the film are based on a real situation that happened to the film's director. This story sounds like something a philandering husband would tell his wife about being taken to a strip club. "No, dear, I didn't enjoy it all. I spent the whole time talking with the girls about Hobbes and Locke." Bullsh!t. Also, there is a lot of talk about taboos in the film. Apparently, the director's idea of taboo is having sex in a hotel room. Oh, how daring! Lastly, there are two fairly sexy sequences in the film. However, they are almost completely ruined by the film's score. Every time the girls start to get naked, this bizarre 80's horror film score comes on the soundtrack. This combined with the bad writing and staging just kills any feelings of arousal you may have. Throughout the screening people would just get up and leave. And when the final "tragic" moments of the film were played out the whole theatre was laughing at how bad it was. The only thing anyone was talking about as we filed out into the lobby was how much we wanted our money and time back.
What Eyes Wide Shut should have been
kazou11 November 2006
This is one of those movies that you love or hate, but that moves you anyway. It has so many details, so many reactions of the characters so the pleasures game that the director wants to play that is difficult for me to treat the film only in only direction or conclusion. As you may have read before, it tells us about a film director in his forties that is shooting an erotic scene and he discovers how the actress enjoys breaking the taboo of masturbation in front of a camera. She tells him how intense and marvelous that feeling was, but after a time they meet by random and she tells him he traumatized her... now the director is interested about what crosses to someone's mind when breaking a rule himself has imposed. I will not say this is a psychologist study, nor a pornographic film although the extremely explicit content, but it is such and intense and dark look about how we can become blind by our passions instead of use our head and the advices we receive from our friends (wife and grandmother in the film). And we all know how naturally and honestly french talk about feelings, which make the film believable. For me, it was a whole experience and, with the Danish film Princess, and maybe the Swish Snow White and Brannagh's The Magic Flute, the only worthy film of the Sevilla 06 film festival.
Postsefalu is correct
kdd-38 March 2007
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.
Very explicit film in many ways
osj250717 February 2015
Can't really say that I liked it or didn't like it, I guess many will feel that they either do one thing or the other, but for my case there were equally many parts for both sides, so the scales was more or less balanced.
I did think it became a bit to artsy in its expression for me, this was basically in many ways a soft-core film, explicit enough to make you fantasy run with it, but not enough to make it porn and thereby not be able to actually show it before after midnight :)
Take a look, you might like it, but my guess it by now is not that interesting for anybody, maybe for the artistic parts and the visuals, but for the story and acting, this is like watching most soft-core, not that interesting.
I did think it became a bit to artsy in its expression for me, this was basically in many ways a soft-core film, explicit enough to make you fantasy run with it, but not enough to make it porn and thereby not be able to actually show it before after midnight :)
Take a look, you might like it, but my guess it by now is not that interesting for anybody, maybe for the artistic parts and the visuals, but for the story and acting, this is like watching most soft-core, not that interesting.
simple masturbation
RResende18 May 2010
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
http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com
-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
http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com
Climaxes without Climax
mftuchman5 December 2011
Warning: Spoilers
It takes a lot of work for a movie featuring stunningly gorgeous women, about the topic of female self pleasuring, to be made into a bad film. I'm sad to have to say that this film pulls it off.
At the beginning of the film, the character playing the director of a documentary about female pleasure explains to the actress that 'this cannot be a porn flick'.
Well, it's not an art flick just because the film says it is. In fact, once you get past the first couple of scenes, you'll wonder where this film is headed and why. There is no real energy propelling this film forward, if you'll pardon the expression, towards any real climax.
As Celine, one of the films characters who plays an actual porn star in the film, that's really what people want, after all.
For me, although the movie was pretty, it was ultimately rather pointless, as one pretty scene seemed like any other.
And, to make it worse, this concept of the exterminating angels who hover around the hero echoing advice just hangs like dead weight over the whole film, adding confusion instead of providing direction.
At the beginning of the film, the character playing the director of a documentary about female pleasure explains to the actress that 'this cannot be a porn flick'.
Well, it's not an art flick just because the film says it is. In fact, once you get past the first couple of scenes, you'll wonder where this film is headed and why. There is no real energy propelling this film forward, if you'll pardon the expression, towards any real climax.
As Celine, one of the films characters who plays an actual porn star in the film, that's really what people want, after all.
For me, although the movie was pretty, it was ultimately rather pointless, as one pretty scene seemed like any other.
And, to make it worse, this concept of the exterminating angels who hover around the hero echoing advice just hangs like dead weight over the whole film, adding confusion instead of providing direction.
The Exterminating Angels
Scarecrow-8827 September 2014
Warning: Spoilers
I think what is meant to be taken seriously as important and poetic isn't as magnetic as the women who perform in director Jean-Claude Brisseau's Les Anges Exterminateurs. To me, the interpretation I got out of the whole film is that the director wants to establish a filmmaker's pursuit of purity and authenticity on screen but through such expectations often derives problems unforeseen and unprepared. But all that remains after the film ends to me is the provocative nature of the actresses and how they embrace the parts, going the extra mile for Brisseau. I really like the lead actor in The Exterminating Angels, Frédéric van den Driessche, as a sincere director of French thrillers who desires to make an experimental film about genuine female orgasms during a number of taboo acts (masturbation in an elegant restaurant, performing lesbian lovemaking in a hotel where being caught might happen, etc.). The screen tests with a number of delectable beauties (including one young porn starlet that conceals her career so she can defy his stereotyping her) reveal open admissions to him due to his fatherly, mature presence, direct interest in their feelings and thoughts, and comfort/ease shared between them and him. Because he is the kind of man that seems to be significantly approachable, respectful, curious, unintimidating, and personable, the ladies who become mainstays during the casting process of his film confide in, adore, and, in some cases, fall in love with him. The harm when their love is unrequited as the director doesn't have the same mounting feelings of developing passion, intensifying emotion and burgeoning adoration concludes this piece of rather pretentious (the film is said to be based on an experience Brisseau had in his past) erotic melodrama. This film includes "fallen angels" with a mission concerning the director and a possible hidden agenda involving a waitress with a boyfriend who is a hood. The price of asking so much from those performing for you intimately, on camera, and in personal conversation follows the director as he finds himself badly beaten by hooded thugs. There's even a cherubic dead grandmother that visits and attempts to protect the director! I think the film is at its best when the women allow themselves to commit to their passions and desires, and the dialogue that exists about them with the director who has an ability to pull from them what innermost lies behind the veil of uninhibited living. Good scene has a former actress (Raphaële Godin) confiding in the director regarding why she quit acting and how her life changed due to the experience of one breakout role when she was only sixteen years old. I especially liked the revelations of young women who speak honestly about sex and what lies within their fantasies, and how sometimes the director is an object of pleasure to them. This film is brimming with lovely women. A highlight includes a hilarious encounter for the director during an interview where one of the actresses asks the director if he could survey her seducing technique which turns out to be an embarrassingly dire striptease. The tragic breakdown of one of his actresses does conclude that identifying too closely with a person (in this case the director), allowing so much of yourself to be naked before him/her, and expecting something the same in return can result in unfortunate consequences.
More Autistic Than Artistic
Seamus28293 June 2007
Every now and again,even France can produce a major turkey. Exterminating Angels is a prime example of this. Exterminating Angels is a pretentious,self indulgent exercise in boring pseudo porn. The plot concerns a film maker, who is casting his next epic,a cinematic study in feminine sexuality. The director interviews some lovely young women to star in his smarmy epic by video taping them while indulging in some graphic & explicit sex scenes. He manages to up the ante by bringing other women into his jaded vision of female sexuality. The sex scenes were actually so boring (as was the rest of this movie),at one point,I had to make use of the men's room (and not for the reasons you may be thinking of,pervert). The central characters were not just annoying,but possessed all the depth of Japanese rice paper. The film tries to be arty by adding some lines of surreal poetry,which only manages to make this "artier than thou" mish mash more of a mess than ever (and besides,Jean Cocteau already made far better use of this idea in his 1948 classic,'Orphee'---a modern day retelling of the Orpheus & Eurydice tale). This is probably the worst French sex farce I've seen since 'Romance',or any piece of dreck from Clair Denis
Quoite Arty but a bit farty too!
paulgeaf25 March 2008
Warning: Spoilers
I gave this a 7. I don't agree with some of the comments here that it was a 'turkey' or a really bad attempt at an arty film. It was an arty film...but then aren't all French films? Hehe. This film does show some pretty erotic situations and, in a form of humorous way the director is playing with us. The scenes are being shot as a test for the actresses to show undiluted, un-acted true passion through orgasm on camera...and it really does seem that we, the viewers of the real film, are watching just that very movie. Clever stuff. That, however is unfortunately is as clever as it gets. The story moves along slowly but it is a nice and relaxed pace. Enough happens to keep your interest easily. .
There are a few holes in the plot; strange irrelevant people; twists; turns; ghostly figures that I could not follow, but that could have been a bad attempt at making it more 'Arty' as another commenter said. .
If I said any more I would have to use the Spoiler warning but I will leave it now. The stuff I mentioned already is in the trailer so not a spoiler!! . I would say Go and watch this movie. Just don't expect to completely understand it though.
I just HAVE TO say one more thing
The women and beauty you witness in this movie are, well, just that: Beautiful. . A pleasure! .
As for the debate on if it is porn or art. . It is neither.
It always confuse me, why we have this big 'downer' on sex, nudity and well, the discovery and display of the human body!
It is just life!
There are a few holes in the plot; strange irrelevant people; twists; turns; ghostly figures that I could not follow, but that could have been a bad attempt at making it more 'Arty' as another commenter said. .
If I said any more I would have to use the Spoiler warning but I will leave it now. The stuff I mentioned already is in the trailer so not a spoiler!! . I would say Go and watch this movie. Just don't expect to completely understand it though.
I just HAVE TO say one more thing
The women and beauty you witness in this movie are, well, just that: Beautiful. . A pleasure! .
As for the debate on if it is porn or art. . It is neither.
It always confuse me, why we have this big 'downer' on sex, nudity and well, the discovery and display of the human body!
It is just life!
This is not art, and it isn't porn. Calling it porn gives the director too much credit.
talonguy4410 April 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I have never been so utterly disgusted by a movie since I saw The Birth of a Nation - but at least I understood WHY that movie was the way it was. Where as we can use the excuse that D.W. Griffith was born in a closed-minded time while objectively looking at his movie, the same cannot be said for the director of Exterminating Angels.
Perhaps if the movie was not based on real life events, it would render me with some other emotion besides disgust for all those involved. The fact that he believes he never did anything wrong is just astounding. Not only were his actual actions as a director insanely un-professional, he backed up his supposed innocence by portraying the females in this movie in a VERY negative light.
This is nothing but the phsyical masturbation of a male-written lesbian porno flick with the mental masturbation of a non-sensical, pretentious, low-budget film that is trying way to hard to be "artsy".
Perhaps if the movie was not based on real life events, it would render me with some other emotion besides disgust for all those involved. The fact that he believes he never did anything wrong is just astounding. Not only were his actual actions as a director insanely un-professional, he backed up his supposed innocence by portraying the females in this movie in a VERY negative light.
This is nothing but the phsyical masturbation of a male-written lesbian porno flick with the mental masturbation of a non-sensical, pretentious, low-budget film that is trying way to hard to be "artsy".
Helping Hands
kosmasp2 July 2013
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
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
love and other secret things
postcefalu9 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Following the path of his late feature, "Secret things", "The exterminating angels" probably close an era in Jean Claude Brisseau's career(one of the most interesting of contemporary french cinema). You can film sex and nudity and not ever telling stories of provocation and other things that women could refuse to show but in the attempt maybe you don't realize what the camera-eye is registering: passion,loneliness, madness and ... love. Anyone could say Brisseau hides things but you must check if you are aware enough to see what this movie is really are. One of the best of the year and one of the best exercises of freedom in wide format
Great erotic scenes!
kellycastlebridge27 November 2008
It's about time to see an art movie that has good female nudity. Lately, most of these so-called "art" films have just been an excuse to show erect penises or exploit the male body. (Like Shortbus) Although the closet-homosexuals like movies like Shortbus, heterosexuals will find Exterminating Angels far more satisfying.
Even though the director does show some pretensions, particularly with the concept of the angels involved in his life, this was MORE than made up for by the great erotic scenes. I watched this movie 3 times on cable just because of those scenes. In particular, one of his actresses uses a small rubber ball to masturbate herself to orgasm. Very sexy.
The movie is loosely based on the director's life and his experiences with some actresses who were unhappy that he did not choose them for a role in one of his films. As they say, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and they went after him by claiming "sexual harassment" (even though they were willing participants)and even taking vigilante action. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. You will have to watch the film to see how everything unfolds but the underlying message is clear; women can be like the Sirens of Greek mythology, their beauty and sexuality lure men to their destruction. I highly recommend watching this film.
Even though the director does show some pretensions, particularly with the concept of the angels involved in his life, this was MORE than made up for by the great erotic scenes. I watched this movie 3 times on cable just because of those scenes. In particular, one of his actresses uses a small rubber ball to masturbate herself to orgasm. Very sexy.
The movie is loosely based on the director's life and his experiences with some actresses who were unhappy that he did not choose them for a role in one of his films. As they say, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and they went after him by claiming "sexual harassment" (even though they were willing participants)and even taking vigilante action. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. You will have to watch the film to see how everything unfolds but the underlying message is clear; women can be like the Sirens of Greek mythology, their beauty and sexuality lure men to their destruction. I highly recommend watching this film.
SUBLIME FILM and great US R1 DVD
canadamelody25 August 2010
I shall not deal with plot but just to say that this is pure filmmaking in the finest and most sublime manner. Those of us who can still view or project 4:3 ratio with size go for the authentic in-camera US R1 DVD that is 4:3 the UK DVD is 16:9 this is an ACADEMY ratio film. Having read the on-screen credits I see no mention of Digital Intermediate... ...miracles...blessings...hoorah !! This film would look amazing on an IMAX screen. The compositional framing in an age of mostly fake DI scope presented films is what cinema should be and shows the superior composition that ACADEMY ratio allows for. The girls are wonderful, the eroticism never sleazy or porn like but genuine and sensual. The lead actor totally natural and compelling. This film has a beautiful aromatic feeling it is a revelation.
Wonderful !!
Wonderful !!
A many-layered masterpiece
bahamut208 February 2015
This is a very short movie for all the content it packs. It feels like several movies at the same time, and it execution is flawless. One of the film's dimensions is its spiritual world, barely touched in the film which only gives us hints of this world through bizarre dialogue and the creatures that are the namesake of the film. Another of its dimensions is its discussion on female desire: a subject rarely explored in film and for which alone it deserves praise. It even explores, in yet further dimensions, female psychology, gender roles, and society's view on them. This is also, undoubtedly, an erotic film, and a very good one at that, which is rare for erotic films, which tend toward sleaziness and pseudoporn. As an erotic film it focuses on desire and fantasy, not arousal and gratification. It features interesting characters, good dialogue and plot, intertwining its multitude of dimensions. In 100 minutes or less, with so many layers on it, the film has no time for gratuitous sex shots.
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