Intermission: brilliantlove (coda)

You may not remember a film called Madagascar Skin. It came out in 1995 and is the sort of film contemporary British cinema does very well; quirky and well-constructed, it stars John Hannah as a young gay man marked with a birth mark the shape of said Indian Ocean island.

Director Ashley Horner's feature brilliantlove shares with Madagascar Skin many positives, including Sean Conway's tidy script, which investigates sexual love against a provocative backdrop. brilliantlove also has a nice sense of humour and never tries to outstrip itself: ambition is great only if you succeed.

Nancy Trotter Landry stands out as the focus of photographer Manchester's obsession; their sex scenes are uninhibited and enjoyable. (Manchester has a penchant for having his lover record her fantasies on a second-hand Dictaphone.) Though the couple's innocence grates, brilliantlove offers one way forward for the British film industry since the demise of the UK Film Council. It's out on DVD on 10 January.

PS I love this poster image for the film by illustrator Hattie Stewart, a really unusual and eyecatching take!

PPS When I started this blog, I aimed to complete 20 entries by Christmas 2010. I've done that so I'm going to take a break, though I may post intermittently. (I didn't get to Last Tango in Paris!) In the meantime, you may enjoy my other blog, which tackles film, as well as books, music and photography. Have a very good 2011!

The Wayward Cloud: Melon obsession

DIRECTED BY Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005

STARRING Lee Kang-Sheng (Hsiao-Kang), Chen Shiang-Chyi (Shiang-Chyi), Sumomo Yozakura (Japanese porn actress)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains pornography theme, strong sex and one scene of sexual assault

RUN TIME 114 mins, Axiom Films

LANGUAGE Mandarin

COVER QUOTE 'High comedy, high-camp musical numbers and a vast amount of hardcore porn' - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT The Wayward Cloud was released in the UK simultaneously with Tsai's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006). The latter is the better film, but The Wayward Cloud is brighter, camper - and probably the most unusual sex film you'll see.

Born in Malaysia, of Chinese background, Tsai moved to Taipei aged 20 to continue his studies. After a visit home, he intended to make a film about foreign labour but this transformed into a story about porn stars. To Tsai they lead a double life and find it hard to be accepted.

THE PLOT Taiwan is in the grip of drought: the foremost method of hydration is either bottled water or comes from watermelons, which are experiencing a boom. Chen and Lee, from Tsai's earlier What Time Is It Over There (2001), meet in a park; a watchseller in that movie, he now acts in porn films. He helps her find a key and they both try to open a mysterious locked suitcase and hang out together, smoking or cooking. (In one scene in the kitchen, they reenact the lobster escape from Annie Hall, this time with crabs.)

He washes in the water tank on the roof of the building, she fantasises over a giant watermelon she keeps in the fridge. She inserts it up her top and walks around with it as if pregnant, simulating giving birth on the building's stairs. A film crew is making a porn movie in the same building; when Chen finds the lead actress passed out in the lift she takes her back to her flat but the shoot continues, using the unconscious woman. Throughout there are many musical numbers.

THE FILM The Wayward Cloud opens in a generic, grey underpass but much of the film, interspersed by kitsch musical numbers, couldn't be more colourful. Even the watermelons, which lie at the heart of director Tsai's fantasy, glow green and bleed bright red.

The musical numbers involve a glittery reptilian creature basking at night-time in the building's rooftop watertank (the Nat King Cole-like The Half-Moon), a torch song number (sung by actress Lu Yi-Ching) and another featuring conical bra-ed women bearing plungers in a bathroom full of urinals and a man dressed as a penis - literally a knobhead (Be Patient!). In another, a bevy of women fondle a smiling statue of Chiang Kai-Shek, while the Laughing Policeman-inspired song highlight features a cross-dressing date gone wrong and a troupe of dancers bearing umbrellas emblazoned with a watermelon motif (What a Date!).

With its 1970s soundtrack, Deep Throat could be a porn musical, and director Gerry Damiano was keen to see a big-budget cinema that embraced hardcore sex. Albeit as a Taiwanese art-house movie, The Wayward Cloud is somewhere close to meeting his dreams, with its over-the-top musical numbers.

While the songs in Tsai's movie are surprising populous - on a par with Les Demoiselles de Rochefort at times - the non-musical scenes tend to feature one person on his or her own, and even when there are more people present - the couple of Lee and Chen, or the porn film crew - very little is said, if anything. The songs feature essentially the only dialogue in the movie.

By contrast, the amateur porn shoot in Lucas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart is a far more chatty, argumentative affair. The subjects in both films are equally isolated from the outside world: Moodysson's characters bound to their flat, those in Tsai's film getting no further than their building's stairs or lift, which seems to go nowhere. Both directors are concerned with their characters as outsiders: an extreme of embodiment of the urban alienation which is a favourite theme of their films.

Despite its extreme scenarios and premise, there is no full-frontal nudity in The Wayward Cloud. There is, however, the rape of the porn actress while she is unconscious so that the film's shoot can continue unhindered. It could be funny if it weren't unconscionable. Chen has previously recognised her from a porn DVD she watches wide-eyed; she comes to realise her partner Lee's new profession.

At the begininning of the film, Chen is presented as somewhat unhinged, hanging around road works insisting she has lost her key amid the builders' heavy machinery. She does find her key, however, and Lee helps her dig it up from the freshly laid tarmac. Water wells up in the hole he has created but, even in these drought-afflicted times, it is ignored.

KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 2:12 A woman in a nurse's uniform lies splayed on a bed. Between her legs is half a very large watermelon. A man in a white coat first licks and then puts his finger in the watermelon, moving it in and out firmly. He inserts more fingers and moves them more vigorously. The woman acts as if he is jacking her off; he feeds her big pieces of the fruit and licks the juice off her naked body. They have sex with him wearing the carved-out watermelon shell like a helmet.

Chapter 5, 45:52 The porn crew are filming a scene in a bathroom. The porn star is bent over the woman, fucking her from behind, as a crew member improvises the effect of a shower using water bottles. In disgust, he finally runs out of water. They continue with some very murky-looking green water.

Chapter 7, 1:02:00; 1:05:24 The man masturbates in a doorway watching the Japanese female star playing with herself on a kitchen counter. She uses a small water bottle but stops when the top comes off; a crew member is ordered to help.

Chapter 10, 1:34:00 In the final scene, the male porn star is filmed having sex with his unconscious female counterpart. The crew variously hold up or manipulate her body as required. Chen watches them and becomes vocally aroused; at the crucial moment, the porn actor leaps up and comes in her mouth.

FURTHER VIEWING Lee Kang-Sheng stars in all of Tsai's films from their debut Rebel of the Neon God (1992), usually lending his name to his characters. They met in a video games arcade.

KEY QUOTE 'The [bottle] cap's inside the Japanese girl. Go see' - porn film director

BONUS CURIO For the film, Tsai made star Lee die his pubic hair 'a golden colour, like a lion's mane.'

In the Realm of the Senses: Empire state

ALSO KNOWN AS Ai no korîda, L'empire des sens

DIRECTED BY Nagisa Oshima, 1976

STARRING Eiko Matsuda (Sada Abe), Tatsuya Fuji (Kichizo Ishida)

CERTIFICATION 18

RUN TIME 98 mins approx, Nouveaux Pictures

LANGUAGE Japanese

COVER QUOTE 'The expression of total passion' - The Times

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT Four years after hardcore Deep Throat, and two years after the soft-focus Emmanuelle, director Oshima distilled the desperation of sex for this exceptionally explicit arthouse movie. This version is available uncut though, crucially, one scene involving a very young child has been panned and scanned.

As the closing narration explains, Oshima based his film on a true story of a murderous affair which took place in Tokyo in 1936 and saw Sada Abe being treated as something of a folk hero in Japan. The insular complicity portrayed between the two protagonists means the film is not wholeheartedly moving but it is an extraordinary vision of sexual obsession.

THE PLOT Former prostitute Sada works in an inn, where she and another maid spy on the owner, Kichizo Ishida, and his wife having sex. When Sada is maligned as a whore she breaks into a furious row, which has to be broken up by Kichi. Kichi makes a pass at Sada when she is working and the two begin an affair, first in the inn and then visiting neighbouring hostels. At one, the couple stage a wedding celebration.

The couple become notorious with the staff at places where they stay for remaining confined in their rooms, barely eating but drinking and fucking all the time. Sada arouses Kichi's jealousy when she goes to visit a client while Sada herself becomes increasingly possessive of Kichi, threatening to cut off his penis if he ever has sex with his wife again.

The affair becomes more intense as the couple introduce strangulation into their intercourse. Sada strangles Kichi, apparently with his previous understanding, and then cuts off his penis. According to the closing vioceover, she wandered the streets of Tokyo gripping his dismembered member for four days before she was arrested.

THE FILM When Kichi first meets Sada she is wielding a knife. He lewdly implies she should be holding his penis instead and, for much of the rest of the movie, she is grasping one, the other, or both. Famously, a knife is finally applied to his penis, fatally.

In the Realm of the Senses opens with a scene of a homeless drunk being abused by some children. When Sada goes to his aid, he recognises her, claiming he used to visit her as a client. He begs one last encounter, offering to pay, and, momentarily, she takes his penis before being called away. There's an immediate sense of the power sex has over her and, perhaps, her own sexual power, which may have reduced this man to the gutter.

Sada is aware of her own attraction to sex and it is important for her, early in her affair with Kichi, to distinguish it from madness. 'I'm not sick,' she says; she's visited a doctor, showing the level of her concern: she's not a nymphomaniac, or any other tawdry diagnosis that might be applied, but 'hypersensitive'.

There is, also, an early indication of her propensity for violence: when she sees Kichi being shaved by his wife, Sada imagines taking the blade and attacking the woman. The scene which has been optically altered shows her tugging a small boy's penis, an image that would likely be deemed indecent under the Protection of Children Act.

Kichi is initially portrayed as a dissolute, if charming, drunk, prone to giggles and singing. He is fascinated by Sada's youth ('I'm no longer so young - how I envy you') and, as her madness grows, increasingly falls under her spell. He is the first to take her by the throat but the roles change as he says he can't bear to see her suffer. He allows her to throttle him with growing force for the pleasure it gives her (it is unclear if he is afforded any thrill beyond her enjoyment). Alongside some outdoor shots, these later scenes are some of the most beautiful in the movie as they achieve an almost mesmeric quality as she rides him in the throes of her orgasm.

Much of the film concentrates on his penis: it is shown erect, Sada fellates him or, at other times, holds a knife to it. When he wakes one morning, he finds her playing with it. 'Did you hold it all night,' Kichi asks. 'Of course.' 'It's as if he was yours,' he says later. 'He is.' Sada even has him piss inside her though, at another time, Kichi muses this is the only time his penis can rest. When they go home, she leads him by his penis and, of course, it becomes the focus of her threats: 'If I cut him off will you die?' 'Probably.' 'Then I don't want to.'

They do venture out, if only to go home or earn some money, and the outside world is an unwelcome visitor on their frolics. Maids criticise the state of their room - smell is especially important to Sada, while both partners enjoy the feel of each other's skin - encourage them to eat or, at least, to have less sex. They seem particularly shocked by Sada's continual willingness to suck Kichi's cock. At one point Kichi is warned, 'She'll end up killing you.'

By then, they are so wrapped up in their perpetual orgy, this prophecy is accepted as inevitable. Sada seems to achieve one incredible, final, orgasm at his death; in blood, she writes on her lover's body: 'The two of us, forever.'

KEY SCENES Chapter 2, 14:05 Kichi has Sada mount him at his home while she plays a musical instrument to cover for his wife. After sex she sucks his penis while he smokes a cigarette.

Chapter 3, 26:06 Sada and Kichi have sex in front of a group of women musicians. One of the women is deflowered by the others using a dildo carved in the shape of a bird before they all join in.

Chapter 4, 40:36 Kichi rapes the elderly madam of the inn where he and Sada are staying while Sada goes to visit a client, a school principal, to earn some money. She urges the ageing teacher to hit her, first across the face, then pinch her and pull her hair.

Chapter 5, 49:26 Sada 'lays' an egg that Kichi has inserted in her vagina, a surrealist image worthy of Georges Bataille. In his Story of the Eye (1928), protagonist Simone indulges in just such behaviour.

Chapter 7, 1:10:30 Sada urges Kichi to have sex with a 68-year-old woman, who pisses herself at the act's conclusion.

Chapter 8, 1:17:54 Kichi allows Sada to tie a belt around his neck which she tightens as they have sex.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT In the Realm of the Senses was critically acclaimed when it arrived at the 1976 London Film Festival, where it won the critics' prize. To avoid cuts, the film was shown in cinema clubs and was only first submitted to the BBFC in 1989.

The film was passed uncut for cinemas in 1991 - optical tinkering for that one scene notwithstanding - largely due to the wealth of critical opinion that had built up behind it. This would support a defence of artistic merit if any prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act was sought. (A friend who saw it at the time only said it confirmed her antipathy towards eggs.) Video/DVD release was officially achieved in 2000. (Virgin had released an uncertificated version in 1982 but it was withdrawn in 1984 when the Video Recordings Act became law; it demands BBFC approval for any release.)

Oshima went on to make such films as Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983), starring musicians David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto alongside director Takeshi Kitano, and Empire of Passion (1978), another eroticised telling of a true murder tale, from 1895, about a peasant woman and her younger lover, who conspire to kill the woman's husband. Afterwards they are pursued by his spirit and overcome with guilt.

KEY QUOTE 'Instead of a knife you should be holding something else' - Kichi

BONUS CURIO (1) To avoid prosecution in Japan while shooting, the film was listed as a French production and undeveloped footage shipped to France for processing and editing.

(2) When Oshima struggled to find anyone to play Sada Abe because of the controversial nature of the material his actress wife, Akiko Koyama, offered to take the role.

Shortbus: Searching for the Big O in NYC

DIRECTED BY John Cameron Mitchell, 2006

STARRING Sook-Yin Lee (Sofia), Paul Dawson (James), Lindsay Beamish (Severin), PJ DeBoy (Jamie), Raphael Barker (Rob), Peter Stickles (Caleb), Jay Brannan (Ceth), Justin Bond

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong real sex

RUN TIME 90 mins approx, Universal

COVERLINE 'Open your mind. And everything else'

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT As GQ proclaims on the DVD cover, 'The most sexually explicit film to go on general release.' And, if you've ever wondered about those Michael Flatley rumours, this is your chance to see the act of auto-fellation.

THE PLOT A variety of characters living in New York are connected by sex club Shortbus; as the city suffers a series of electrical 'brown outs' they're looking for more sex, happier relationships, or both. Sofia meets couple Jamie and James through her work as a therapist and they introduce her to Shortbus; there she meets dominatrix Severin and the pair agree to talk through their various problems.

After five years together, Jamie and James decide to open up their relationship and they meet Ceth at the club; neighbour Caleb is obsessed with James, whom he follows everywhere and photographs. After Caleb rescues James following a suicide attempt by the latter, all the characters regroup at Shortbus in a black out. A carnival-esque atmosphere breaks out.

THE FILM Shortbus is famed for putting real sex in a relatively mainstream picture - it touts itself as an 'E-XXX-tremely romantic comedy'. Certainly its reputation will have further spread with its availability on DVD. What is remarkable about this film is it's no-nonsense attitude to gay sex. Many of the other films featured in this blog, if they feature gay themes at all, are ambivalent in their attitude to homosexuality, if not downright homophobic. Even the lead character in Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell is antipathetic towards gay men: according to her, they don't look at women, which is not something I've ever heard before.

A little like Lucas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart, the characters in Shortbus are slightly damaged: Jamie can't seem to get over his past as a child actor; his partner James is a bipolar former hustler; Sofia, a sex therapist ('I prefer "couples counsellor"'), has never had an orgasm; her husband Rob behaves like a spoilt child; dominatrix Severin has never had a relationship; lovestruck Caleb is a stalker. The only well-balanced personality here is Justin Bond (of cabaret duo Kiki and Herb), playing himself as the manager of Shortbus; he's the sole likeable character among much therapy-speak and self-centred obsessionalism.

The film does sometimes feel a little close to it workshop roots: a game of truth or dare is a banal way to have characters reveal something of themselves. There are plenty of nice touches, though, not least the lovely animation of New York (by John Bair) that links the scenes, and the soundtrack by Yo La Tengo, which also features Scott Matthew, Anita O'Day and Animal Collective.

It soon becomes clear depressive James is preparing the way for suicide: he is opening up his five-year relationship with Jamie to secure a new partner for his boyfriend, as well as making a videotape of memories for Jamie. Resolution for Sofia, who has only ever slept with her husband, seems more difficult to pin down. Again like in A Hole in My Heart, Sofia tries vigorously to make herself come with a vibrator on the bathroom floor but is distracted by her husband, who is wanking to the internet next door. Attracted throughout by a couple at the club credited as 'beautiful couple' (they really are), Sofia is finally shown with them while Rob looks on.

There are big themes here: an elderly man who says he is a former mayor of the city consoles himself that he did all he could to contain the AIDS crisis, and one of the first shots of New York is of Ground Zero. Shortbus works best as a post-9/11 parable of a city powered by sexual energy. It also says, you may want or need to be in a relationship, it may just not be the right one.

KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 3:25 The central characters are introduced, having sex: Sofia and Rob are banging away on a piano; dominatrix Severin is flogging a preppie client, and James is sucking himself off on video.

Chapter 5, 35:00 Jamie, James and Ceth have sex together. When Ceth calls for a bit more noise, the trio breaks into the Star-Spangled Banner.

Chapter 10, 1:19:51 A counterpoint to the opening scene, where the realigned couples have sex, including Caleb and James, and Sofia on her own on a fantasy, lamp-lit shoreline.

FURTHER VIEWING The film James makes for Jamie in Shortbus feels and looks very similar to Jonathan Caouette's remarkable 2003 documentary Tarnation, which Mitchell executive produced. Caouette has assembled almost 20 years of home video footage, including Super-8 and even answering machine messages, chronicling his mother's depression and its effect on him. Their stories are shocking but the resulting film is very beautiful.

KEY QUOTE 'Voyeurism is participation' - Maitre d' at Shortbus

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.