ENGLISH SUBTITLES INCLUDED

Director Jean-Claude Brisseau brings us another truly independent effort with what will be viewed either as a pornographic failure or as a filmic masterpiece of tragedy in the Greek tradition.

Viewing the film in the best light, it is the latter. Although the audience, at least the male audience, will have to fight the temptation to view the footage from a carnal perspective lest they fall victim to the horrendous fate of the storied director François (Frédéric van den Driessche).

The movie is a film within a film and a story within a story. This is good work by director Brisseau, to use some very excellent camera angles to give the audience the perspective of both the film maker and the film viewer. Even more to the point, the audience is made to feel the same contradictions and prurient temptations that befall hapless director François.

What a disturbing ending, then, when he suffers the fate of his fall from artistic grace to mortal sin. The victory of the film is that many of us are right there with him as his vengeful spirits come home. We are made to suffer with him.

The film consists mostly of character director François and his three young female leads. They have been cast, in complete honesty, to make a film exploring the female pleasures of the taboo.

The three are Charlotte, Julie and Stéphanie, ably played by Maroussia Dubreuil, Lise Bellynck and Marie Allan. The first third of the film is about François’ humorous efforts to recruit the three women he needs for the parts in the film that is planned to be an artistic “project” to depict the direct expressions of female sexual pleasure on screen.

As one might expect, this process meets with a substantial number of failures as the director describes the film to his attractive applicants. He begins by discussing female sexual pleasure, with a man or a woman, and then proceeds to the part about doing that on film. When they ask him why he doesn’t just hire porn actresses, he explains they would not work because there is no emotion in what they feel. The film is not just about sexual stimulation, it is about the journey to experience the forbidden for the first time, even if only for that one time.

Indeed, one of the few applicants who agrees to the film tests is rejected because she seems too comfortable with it, in spite of the fact that she has never appeared nude on film before, let alone engaging in explicit sex. The actresses have to feel the strangeness of it. They have to feel the fear of the unknown.

The use of the word “project” shades François film in the depersonalized manner in which he envisions it. However, as the project progresses, love, or lust, find their way into the project and the project becomes less like a bridge or a building and more like playing with the fires of the soul.

In the background are the two women who make up the chorus, Raphaële Godin and Margaret Zenou. They both love and hate François but are mostly there to share his fate with us. Rather, they are his fate and also his conscience. Through them we hear the echoes of his own fears and misgivings as he dons his wings and prepares for his flight to the sun.

In the end, all of the four learn that it is impossible to share intimate knowledge of their most personal inner feelings and be completely unattached at the same time. Two of the women fall in love with each other and the third falls in love with François.

Suddenly there appears on the set a young thug who casually mentions to François that he occasionally takes down rich guys. He is the embodiment of François’ failure to maintain his artistic elevation. He is the water creeping in through the hole of the “project.” As the actress’ love grows for her co-star, so does her hate for the director and her outrage and having her love recorded onto a machine. Her betrayal of François is not so much revenge as it is fate. The two women of the chorus have ordained it. He is to be left half a man, but it is mandatory that he survive to continue to live in the world of his creation.

A truly remarkable film,’Exterminating Angels’ itself depicts neither extermination nor angels. But it does depict considerable graphic female sexual stimulation and so should only be viewed by the strong of heart. Getting past this, the viewer will be treated to one of the most original and entertaining film experiences of this day.