Les Anges Exterminateurs (The Exterminating Angels)

Jean-Claude Brisseau is not the most exciting French born director. Les Anges Exterminateurs (2006) is the second part of a trilogy that began with Choses Secretes (2002)  a series of films that are said to explore social taboos. Where as Choses Secretes deals with sex and office politics this later film deals with a movie director’s project about female eroticism but is no more erotically stimulating than the previous film. There can’t be many European directors that can make sex scenes between three beautiful young naked women dull!!

 

Nice girls shame about the film.

Basically what we have is a movie about a film director who embarks on a project about chronicling female sexual desire. After auditioning a number of young women, most of whom tell him to get lost, he ends with three struggling actresses who are glad of the work and prepared to perform sexual acts in front of his camera. 

 

It might stimulate the director but not the audience!

Said to be semiautobiographical, in 2002 director and writer Brisseau had been arrested on charges of harassment, fined and given a suspended one-year prison sentence. The plaintiffs were three women who had performed sexual acts in front of him during their audition!! A tame unexceptional sex outing that comes nowhere near the eroticism of Catherine Breillat (Bluebeard (2009)).

Choses secretes (Secret Things)

Released as part of a series of contemporary films from France under the Tartan Cine Lumiere collection Choses secretes (2002) tells a rather suggestive tale of every day office folk. Two rather attractive young women use their obvious charms to work their way through the labyrinth of departmental politics. When the naïve barmaid Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) meets the exotic dancer Nathalie (Coralie Revel) at the club where they both work they start a relationship and move in together. Both decide it’s about time they improved their lot. Using sexuality as a weapon they both get secretarial work in a Paris Bank and promotion is not long coming. Sandrine seduces her espoused manager while Nathalie concentrates on the owner’s son, a man with his own unsavoury agenda.

Office politics?

Directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau the film is sometimes associated with the New French Extremity a group of modern French films that generally excel in sex and/or violence. Other better known directors of this particular genre are Francois Ozon, Gasper Noe and the brilliant Catherine Breillat all well known for the more explicit art house movie! Not withstanding its blatant eroticism and the sadistic pleasures of office politics Brisseau’s immoral tale is somewhat dull and uninspiring.