Le sentiment de la chair

Héléna Onelli (Annabelle Hettmann) is an intern of Medical Illustration in anatomical drawing in a hospital and obsessed by the human body and internal organs. She complains of pain on her back and is submitted to X-Rays by the radiologist and professor Benoît Govion (Thibault Vinçon) that does not find anything wrong with her. Their mutual interest in human anatomy leads them to a love affair based on sex. Héléna asks Benoît to go further in his exploration of her body and the lovers have no limits in their intercourse. Héléna continues to complain of pain on her back and Benoit examines her with the MRI machine and does not find anything wrong with Héléna. However, she wants him to explore her internally and Benoit breaks up with Héléna afraid of how far he could go in his curiosity and exploration.

"Le sentiment de la chair", a.k.a. "The Sentiment of the Flesh" is an erotic romance with a great chemistry between the gorgeous and hot Annabelle Hettmann, who is unknown in Brazil, and Thibault Vinçon. After a promising beginning, the author and director Roberto Garzelli is completely lost and does not know how to develop the story of obsession for anatomy of the two lovers. The disgusting conclusion spoils what could have been a reasonable romance. My question to the author is how insane would be a radiologist and professor to operate like a surgeon, without anesthetist or nurse, and bury his mouth in the flesh of the patient? My vote is one.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Helena is an art anatomy student, who is quite good, and Benoit is a doctor, who lectures on anatomy, and brings up that each person has variables as they are unique. Helena is obsessed that she has something wrong with her spine, even though x-rays show nothing wrong. What this evolves to is an obsession with Benoit getting to know her anatomy, but it is only on the surface, and what an x-ray can show. Soon, it gets into MRI scans, where the organs can be seen, and here he makes a huge mistake. He messes with the injected dye, thinking he will be able to see the organs better, but in reality, it gives her a bad reaction. Helena is still not satisfied, and steals a coloscope, wanting Benoit to see her insides in real time and real pictures. That sort of shakes him up, and he steps back, as if he realizes he is going to far. But it is not over, and things get worse. It is actually a fairly boring movie, and while done well, would appeal to a small audience.

No pun intended - but you will understand by the end of it. You may not want to be eating... in or out, while you watch the movie (again no pun intended). The characters in this are weird to say the least - but they do have some sense. At least the male character seems to at some point in time. But the attraction may be too much.

I reckon the end is something that the movie does build up to. Not sure if it is as shocking as you may imagine it. I would argue, that if it leaves you cold ... well you have watched a lot of movies and are aware this is only a movie. You can distance yourself from that then. I have respect for that. Good for you.

Everyone else: be prepared - for something shocking. Something you may even call disgusting I assume. You have been warned about this slow burner.

THE SENTIMENT OF THE FLESH chronicles the stormy, kinky relationship between a gifted medical illustration student and a radiologist.

Going into the movie without any foreknowledge, my impression during the earlier parts was that of a more or less routine steamy romance, but in a medical setting. When curious romantic musings appeared about wanting to see everything of a loved one, including their insides, I dismissed it as the kind of bizarre philosophical connection only the French can pull off.

But then, it became clear that this was really a film about an unhealthy obsession with a potentially dangerous fetish. Yet even that realization did not prepare me for the grotesque ending, which would seem to be more at home in the horror genre.

This type of movie has been done before, and much better, albeit in other settings (see the list at the end). For one thing, the dramatic build-up to the grand finale was not developed well enough. The movie is relatively short, so there would have been room for intermediate fetish sequences to lead more smoothly into the extreme finale. The intensity of the movie stayed about the same up to the ending, which made both the movie less exciting and the final act more jarring.

I found the motivation of the characters in some scenes hard to follow. One moment, they don't want to see you, the next they want to become almost literally one with you or put their life into your hands. It was very hard for me to make sense out of all this, and the result was that I could not relate to the characters. This is a big problem for a film that introduces the audience to an unusual kink through its protagonists.

As an art-house love story it may have an audience, but this is definitely only for people who dig this kind of stuff.

Better movies with similar elements are:

1. IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976)

2. CRASH (1996)

2. THE PIANO TEACHER (2001)

A female art student and a male radiologist discover that they share a fascination for certain body parts - those that are inside the body. This is an unbelievably dull movie. There is hardly any plot. The only point of the movie is that the two main characters are obsessed with internal organs. They talk about the organs endlessly. The man then gets off by doing an MRI on her and lusting after her organs. This works for a while but then looking at pictures of her organs is not satisfying enough for either of them. Hence, it is taken to the next step where he must touch her organs...and the film takes a turn from merely boring to disgusting.