By now, the release of a Catherine Breillat film is a ritual: whispers of scandal give way to full-blown outrage and a polarized critical reception. Such was the case with Anatomy of Hell in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Stylistically austere and at times overwhelmingly self-reflexive, Anatomy of Hell is an inventory of exchanges -- verbal, emotional and sexual -- between an unnamed gay man (Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi) and a stranger (Amira Casar) whose life he saves after she attempts suicide. She coerces him to spend four nights at her seaside residence by offering money and a bizarre entreaty -- "watch me where I'm unwatchable."

Breillat's narrative, adapted from her own novel, Pornocracy, has been stripped down in every sense. The coital imagery is stark, the dialogue disconnected. They coldly prod each other without the pretense of romance, and the threat of violence hangs over their activities like a shroud.

Interviewed during the Toronto International Film Festival, Breillat is eager to refute charges of pornography. "Censorship invents this: it invents pornography," she says. "I demand that censorship justify itself. If it can use words to express itself, to explain itself rationally, fine, but it does not."

Already, several of the film's most potent images -- including Casar's violation by a gardening implement -- have been debated. Nudity and the representation of sex in film is a perpetual hot-button issue, but Breillat believes that Anatomy of Hell will prove particularly troubling. For not only does it offer cinematographic consideration of female genitalia: it seeks also to destigmatize their representation in art and culture.

"The film isn't about sexuality," says Breillat. "It's about sex -- the sex. Gender, if you like. A woman's sex. Something that for us is not visible, not showable, not conceivable, not even thinkable."

It's reductive to say that Anatomy of Hell is merely a challenge to censorship. If its audacious formalism seems to cut off conventional audience involvement at the knees, there is still much to admire in the bravery of the performances. Both actors deserve credit for serving obediently as props in Breillat's philosophical inquiry, but the bullheaded porn star Siffredi astounds. Playing a self-involved gay man who curtly voices his disdain for women, he is threatening and unlikeable.

Breillat knows that Anatomy of Hell will be controversial. Her hope is that the controversy encourages attention. She sees herself as part of a filmmaking vanguard that can impart change. "The morality of censorship is based on fashion," she says. "But morality can't be based on fashion, it should be based on ethics. Only filmmakers can change that. Only filmmakers can challenge censorship, and force the censors to justify themselves."