Stylish but barely mediocre overall

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

What can I say?! An assault upon the senses, certainly and I feel I should have read the book first. Or maybe not. Artily shot and still erotic, although the continuous walking up the stairs in the deserted building, towards the end stretches one's endurance, as does the 15 minutes or so of static at the end. Thank goodness for fast forward on the remote. Still at least I was pressing forward and not stop. Before everything seems to slip into a nightmare scenario there are, for the record, a surprisingly erotic gay sex scene and a similarly effective lesbian one. The turn for heterosexuals comes in the deserted building and is a tawdry affair with coughing and pissing. Also the examination of what I assume to be caesarean scars remind one of the hard to watch forceps assisted birth at the start. The casual violence with a snip here and a wrench there perhaps foreshadowing what is to come. Narrative may be the scourge of the middle class but total lack of any certainly makes life a little difficult. Mind you being the son of a mad, blind and violent father I don't suppose life was a bowl of cherries for Mr Bataille.

Okay, the sex scenes (read: the entire film minus one boring staircase walking scene) were well done (by porn standards), "classy", "artsy", etcetera. Having not read the novel yet I was hoping that there would have simply been more to this film other than pornography. I knew that the novel was supposed to be very erotic and unapologetically so, but is that all there is to it? Does the novel simply narrate a bunch of screwing and blow jobs? Here's how simply this film can be broken down, scene-by-scene, without leaving anything out: --Stock footage of a woman giving birth while the narrator reads a brief biography about Georges Bataille.--Two guys have sex.--Two women have sex.--Girl stumbles up flight of stairs for like 15 minutes while other women scream from somewhere.--Girl pisses on the floor/stares out filthy window.--Two girls and some guy have sex.--10-15 minutes of black screen and electronic noise.--The End.Perhaps if there were at least some interesting narration from the novel during this stuff it would have had more of an impact as a piece of compelling art rather than a slightly artsy porn flick. I guess I just need to read the book.

I went to see this film with high expectations because of my interest in Bataille, and thought that an 'arthouse-cinema'-adaption would stand a good chance in translating his beautiful and dreamlike semi-surrealistic novel into a full length movie. And what do i get? A dull porno flick 'decorated' with tiresome 'arty' s/m and fetishist settings. Where's the connection to Bataille and "The story of O"? It is nowhere to find; except from the 'kinky sex', which then again has nothing much in common with the original story's erotic content - apart from the occurrence of sex.. You see, this film shows nothing but sex, it has no narrative, no presentation of characters, etc; i.e.: it is just regular porn. You get 3 quite long sex-scenes (boy + boy; girl + girl; girl + girl + boy) and a few scenes of masturbation, all shot in a dreadful 'arty' way with bad lightning and unreasonable editing. Apart from that there's a gratuitous scene of an obstetrical childbirth - which is completely meaningless but, one might assume, presumably seen as 'cool' or 'awsome' by the director - and an overly long scene of a ragged girl walking up a really long staircase. That's it. Yes, after spending 80 minutes with this film, I am a tad disappointed...This film resembles a slightly kinky porno you'd stumble over on cable-TV late at night, and most likely turn off. I am not the least of a rabid anti-sex-preacher, but: a) this is just a cheesy porno movie; b) cheesy porn is usually really dull to watch; c) to sprinkle it with a bit of 'daring, exciting' s/m won't make me cheer.I guess Bataille would've seen this porno flick as an insult, or perhaps just yawned a bit and sighed at what people try to pass to the audience. This film is for porn-buffs only. Try to get a copy of 'Valerie and her week of wonders' by Jaromil Jires instead.

I went into this film not knowing what it was about. We had just finished seeing another independent film, which finished early and was great, so we went to this one since it was the next one playing. The ticket seller did say the movie was sexually explicit. In mind, that meant something like the deleted scene from Angel Heart. However, what we saw was hard core.It is kind of sad to see what some people think of as art these days. This was a porno movie plain and simple. Just think, I can edit a porno movie and splice it with a dance number and a breech birth and can it an independent film. People just get over your repression and buy a real porno movie at least you'll see a ---shot as well.