Scarecrow-88 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.

bcrumpacker 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.

christopher-underwood 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.

doctorrugger 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.