Battle in Heaven: Flag bearer

DIRECTED BY Carlos Reygadas, 2005

STARRING Marcos Hernández (Marcos), Anapola Mushkadiz (Ana), Bertha Ruiz (Marcos' wife)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong real sex

RUN TIME 94 mins approx, Tartan

LANGUAGE Spanish

COVER QUOTE 'Beautiful and utterly compelling. Carlos Reygadas makes films like no one else in modern cinema' - Esquire

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT Director Reygadas provoked controversy with his intergenerational sex scene in debut movie Japón (2002) which featured a non-professional cast. The posters for Battle in Heaven have the very beautiful Anapola Mushkadiz lying naked to her waist on a bed, which is surrounded by clouds. Much was made of the movie's 'real' sex scenes.

THE PLOT Marcos, a chauffeur for an army general, is sent to meet his employer's daughter, Ana, at the airport and takes her to the high-class, suburban brothel where she works. She tells him to come in for sex with one of her colleagues but it emerges that he wants to have sex with Ana. She spots that he is out of sorts and he admits that he and his wife kidnapped a baby who died. His wife fears that he will give everything away but Marcos promises Ana that he will give himself up to the police. Before he does so he visits Ana at her boyfriend's flat; Marcos leaves but then returns and stabs her. He joins a religious procession on his knees and has a sack placed over his head; blood emerges and he collapses in the Basilica.

THE FILM Despite visual and structural differences, Carlos Reygadas's Battle in Heaven shares several themes with Y tu mamá tambien, by his Mexican compatriot, Alfonso Cuarón. Both films have an interest in the urban landscape of Mexico City - plenty of shots of its streets - sexuality and class, though only Reygadas goes so far as to explicitly mix the last two themes.

In Battle in Heaven's central scene, middle-aged chauffeur Marcos sleeps with his young charge, Ana, the daughter of his boss. Their relationship doesn't just transgress class and age boundaries but, as Ana points out, Marcos has known Ana for 15 years, since she was a child.

In the manner the camera sometimes goes for a wander in Cuarón's film, it does so here, scanning across neighbourhood rooftops, showing aerial repairmen at work, the city's skyline, and a dripping tap, before returning to the bedroom and a shot of the couple's genitals. The couple are tender with each other after sex: Ana's hand inches over to take that of the older man, her servant.

Reygadas had known Marcos Hernández, who plays Marcos, as he had worked as a driver for 30 years at Mexico's ministry of culture, where Reygadas' father worked. The thickset woman playing Marcos's wife, Bertha Ruiz, is the wife of a regional police commander. Her husband's only concern was that her sex scene be simulated. Reygadas is essentially transferring Catherine Breillat's filmic philosophy to central American and, indeed, extending it, through his casting of non-professionals.

The BBFC certificate for Battle in Heaven warns that it includes 'real' sex scenes and much of the pre-release hype focused on that. But the scenes, though more explicit than most in cinema (for instance, the blow jobs that bookend the film, or the shot of Ana's genitals), are not so explicit that they are definitely real. The BBFC ends up in a strange position here, advising viewers that convincing sex scenes are authentic, though they may be simulated (there's no reason a prosthesis couldn't be used for the blow job scenes).

There is a spiritual side to Reygadas' film that's more obvious than that in Y tu mamá también. When Marcos first sees the pilgrims whose procession he later joins, he is at a petrol station where the blaring classical music seems to have sent him into a fugue state. 'What do you think?' asks the mechanic, as he checks the oil. 'They're all sheep,' Marcos says. 'I was talking about the car,' comes the succinct reply.

Slowly Marcos' attitude changes: in bed with his wife he stares at a portrait of Jesus.
His wife urges Marcos not to give himself up but, if he is determined, to at least wait one more day so they can join the pilgrimage: 'Something special is going to happen,' she says, 'Something's going to change.' As it is, the extra day is the one on which he murders Ana, provoking a police hunt. Marcos' son reveals the location of the dead body of the baby that was kidnapped while his wife is taken to the procession to help spot her husband. (The policeman in charge of the operation looks and acts like a Mexican Takeshi Kitano, if you can imagine.)

When all the celebrants have left the Basilica, Marcos' wife is given permission to enter first to find her husband. Her husband's body is kneeling in a pew, a blood-soaked bag over his head. She reaches out to touch his shoulder and his body slumps to the floor. It starts to rain, and the next scene is of men trying to ring the massive church bell, though no sound is heard on the soundtrack.

This is followed by a recurrent scene in the movie, of soldiers either raising or lowering a giant Mexican flag, a ceremony Marcos has followed religiously in the past. It is accompanied by loud military music, and other scenes have very loud music, for instance Bach at the garage or Tavener's The Protecting Veil. It serves as jolting a purpose as the voiceover in Y tu mamá también.

It's possible to think of the opening scene, where Ana fellates Marcos, as Marcos' fantasy. Its repetition at the film's end hints at something else made manifest - a meeting in heaven, or Marcos' dying dream?

KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 00:40 A sweaty, middle-aged man, Marcos, with a combover and paedo glasses is shown getting a blow job from an equally naked young woman, Ana, against a grey backdrop. The camera tracks down his standing body and then round her kneeling figure till we're facing her; a tear trickles down one cheek.

Chapter 7, 37:07 Marcos is shown having sex with his hefty wife from behind. As she kneels on the bed he regards her back and an icon of the wounded Christ on their bedroom wall.

Chapter 9, 48:18 Ana is riding Marcos naked in bed; as they have sex the camera moves out the window and tacks across the skyline before returning to the couple. She gets off him and, as they lie side by side, the camera shows her pussy.

Chapter 15, 1:29:36 Ana is again shown giving Marcos a blow job in the space with the grey backdrop. Both are noticeably more relaxed and happier; they say that they love each other.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT Reygadas went on to make the beautiful, mystical Silent Light (2007), set among the Mexico's Mennonite community. A fan of Carl Theodor Dreyer's work from his time as a potential film student in Brussels, Reygadas borrows the ending to the Danish director's film Ordet (1955). There are again the everyday sex scenes he likes to show, amidst another cast of non-professionals.

KEY QUOTE 'What you really want is to fuck me, right, Marcos?' - Ana

BONUS CURIO (A Brush with Nipples, Part III) Mushkadiz's hair extends wildly for the cover of the US DVD (in the UK, the film's title was emblazoned over her chest):

Anatomy of Hell: Bataille in heaven

DIRECTED BY Catherine Breillat, 2004
STARRING Amira Casar, Rocco Siffredi
CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong sexual detail and strobing effects
RUN TIME 77 mins approx, Tartan
LANGUAGE French

COVERLINE 'WARNING: THIS FILM CONTAINS SCENES WHICH MAY OFFEND' (IN CAPITAL LETTERS)

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT Director Catherine Breillat started writing explicit novels at the age of 17 (L'homme facile); in 1999, she cast porn star Rocco Siffredi in his first mainstream film. Romance tells the story of a young woman teacher who, unhappy in her relationship, meets a man (Siffredi) with whom she explores ever more extreme sexual experiences. In the succeeding years Breillat directed such well-received, provocative, fare as A ma soeur (2001) and Sex is Comedy (2002). After a gap of five years, this is her return to working with Siffredi in a role she wrote specially for him, based on her novel Pornocratie.

THE PLOT A man goes down on another man outside a gay club. Inside, 'the woman', as she is referred to, is approached by a man but brushes him off; she goes to the toilet, bumping into another man on the way (Siffredi). In the toilet, 'the woman' slits her left wrist with a razor; 'the man' finds her and takes her to a pharmacy. Afterwards she goes down on him in the street; she makes him a work proposition: he is to come and visit her in her home and watch her explore herself sexually.

The proposal takes place over four nights and, from initial observer, he is soon drawn into sex with her and stays until morning. On the last day he accepts payment from her and leaves her wallowing in her own waste, he says. In a bar, he shares his woes with another drinker. When 'the man' returns to the house he finds it deserted and the bed dismantled. He pictures himself pushing the woman off the cliff into the sea.

THE FILM A stern, written notice at the beginning of Anatomy of Hell says: 'A film is an illusion, not reality-fiction or a happening. It is a true work of fiction. For the actress's most intimate scenes, a body double was used. It's not her body, it's an extension of a fictional character.' Presumably this was placed at the request of the actress, Amira Casar, but it provokes a host of questions, not least why Breillat didn't use an actress who was willing to appear without a body double.

The scenes are extremely intimate but the owner of the female genitalia shown in close-up (having a finger inserted or expelling objects; more of that later) is named: Pauline Hunt (unless this is some form of rhyming slang). These may not be Casar's bits, but they nevertheless belong to someone, and Breillat has taken a decision to show them unflinchingly.

There's no such coyness about Siffredi, whose erect penis is shown several times; a seasoned porn star, his inclusion is also nonetheless initially puzzling. His character is gay so you might assume there would be little sexual activity between them that requires Siffredi's experience to come into play. 'The man's' sexuality is never referred to directly, 'the woman' uses such euphemisms as 'you people' or simply the plural 'you'.

Despite its voyeuristic premise, Anatomy of Hell is a very talky movie, perhaps predictably for a novelist. The characters speak in sweeping statements and many of them feature male stereotypes of women, as well as straight women's stereotypes of gay men ('People like you don't look at women,' she says early on). The man is horrified by women's bodies: their colour, the lips, the form, sweat; he compares shaved skin to that of a plucked chicken and, even less favourably, to a frog.

The first night he visits her, wearing a white suit, he complains about the cost - for which he will be recompensed - of visiting her isolated coastal home. The bedroom set where most of the action takes place reminds me of something from a sketch by Paula Rego or de Chirico; the raging sea outside is pure Hitchcock or Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. 'Why do you exhibit yourself this way?' he asks. 'The fragility of female flesh inspires disgust or brutality,' she opines in (a form of) response.

Breillat provides a voice-over to the film that elides into 'the man's' point of view. There are two scenes of childhood, strongly influenced by Georges Bataille: in the first, a boy climbs a tree to feed worms to some freshly hatched birds, which later remind him of the flesh and look of a vagina in its nest. The boy carefully places one of the chicks in his shirt pocket but on the climb back down it is is killed; he throws it on the ground and stamps on it. In the second memory, a young girl strips and lies down in exactly the pose from Marcel Duchamp's Etant donnés; the boys with her insert the arm of some spectacles into her vagina and pull it out bearing her 'slime', as 'the man' sees it.

Over the course of their transaction, the couple's relationship changes: when he arrives the second night, she has dressed up, in black, from the previous white, and done her hair, though he immediately strips her and undoes her hairclip (the red of the room prefigures her menstruation; he wears a cross); on the third night he finds the house unlocked and is protective ('Anyone could have come in').

After the couple have sex for the final time, 'the man's' penis is covered in blood when he withdraws. It is so bloody, the scene is reminiscent of the male dismemberment in Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses. While it seems like an emasculation, a drawing together of both of them, the couple discuss the significance of the blood: 'Man can't give life,' he says; 'He gives death and so gives eternal life,' she responds.

'The man' goes to a bar and gets drunk; he has a discussion about the relationship that is a parody of heterosexual male conversations: She's a slut, the Queen of Sluts. Hump as many as you can, replies his drinking partner, like goats. In the age-old fantasy, the right sex has seemingly set him straight. Back at the deserted house, the only trace he finds of their relationship is a folded, blood-stained sheet, as if 'the woman' knew 'the man' would be back, and has left him this memento.

KEY SCENES Chapter 6 27:31 'The man' puts his finger in 'the woman's vagina (shown in detail) before removing it and examining the traces on his digit. She gets the giggles.
Chapter 8 33:15 As 'the woman' sleeps, 'the man' parts her thighs from behind and paints first her labia (lips) and then her anus with a lipstick, creating a gaudy mouth, before applying it to her face.
Chapter 9, 35:24 Again, as she lies apparently asleep, he has sex with her from behind.
Chapter 11, 46:40 'The man' goes to the garden and chooses a three-pronged wooden rake. When he returns to the room, he inserts its handle between the legs of the sleeping woman.
Chapter 12, 52:56 'The woman' pulls a tampon out of her vagina. She dangles it like a dead mouse, then drops it into a glass of water like a teabag. The man and woman drink from the glass.
Chapter 13, 58:58 'The woman' pushes a stone dildo out from her vagina (this is shown in close up). 'The man' wanks her with it before they have sex.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT Breillat's latest films are less explicit but no less powerful: The Last Mistress (2007) features the wonderful Asia Argento (and includes Casar in the cast), and there have been two fairytale adaptations, reminiscent of the work of Angela Carter, Bluebeard (2009) and Sleeping Beauty (2010). Siffredi has returned to porn, where he is prolific, notably in his own 'Animal Trainer' and 'Puppet Master' series.

KEY QUOTE 'You talk too much' - 'The man'

BONUS CURIO (or, A Brush with Nipples Pt II) As has happened elsewhere, Casar's appearance undergoes slight changes for Anatomy of Hell's DVD cover image in different territories, from having a breast exposed (below, as it is in the relevant scene in the film) to being covered with a nightdress (top). My, UK, version has her naked, but with a nipple airbrushed away, unnervingly.