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Exterminating Angels (Les Anges exterminateurs) DVD Review

by Kam Williams

Voyeuristic DVD Features Director Demanding Steamy Screen Tests

Film director Francois (Frédéric Van Den Driessche) comes up with a voyeuristic variation on the proverbial casting couch. Instead of expecting his aspiring starlets to sleep with him, he decides to ask each applicant to get naked and masturbate during her screen test. Though he wants to keep it all very professional, this is easier said than done, since the scenes he's having the applicants shoot during their tryouts involves the examination of the female climax, so he urges them on to the point of orgasm.

This is the intriguing premise of Exterminating Angels, another envelope-pushing project from Jean-Claude Brisseau. In 2005, the controversial iconoclast was convicted and received a suspended one-year sentence for sexually harassing actresses he had pressured to play with their privates while auditioning for his previous picture, Secret Things.

Here, Brisseau appears to be thumbing his nose at the authorities by exploring essentially the same subject-matter, especially when in such a provocative manner. Be forewarned, the action gets rather autoerotic during this thinly-veiled excuse to watch attractive young women satisfy themselves.

The director even ups the ante and talks some of these extroverts into making love to each other. This result in twosomes, a threesome, even a ménage a gang. Emotional complications do ensue, but don't be surprised if you forget about the plot as your eyeglasses fog up from the nearly non-stop carnality.

The only question by film's end is whether what you've just witnessed was pornography or a legit flick, given the fact that none of the sex seems simulated. So, is it real or is it Memorex? The elusive answer to this cinematic conundrum just might be the point of this jaw-dropping exercise in self-indulgence.

Masturbation as method acting.

Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
In French with subtitles
Running time: 99 minutes
Studio: IFC First Take

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