Word: breillat
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Romance, directed by Catherine Breillat, promises to be among the most controversial films released this fall. The theme is sexual desire, illustrated by trs anatomical angles: fellatio, bondage and domination and even childbirth. If you hated the censorship in Eyes Wide Shut, you'll get quite an eyeful and earful here...
...Despite the rampant nudity, this is no horny-male flick. Breillat focuses on the frustrations of Marie (Caroline Ducey). Romance is the story of her search for both sexual and emotional satisfaction. Marie looks like a sweet young thing, but that's where it ends. Marie wades through three lovers. First is Paul (Sagamore Stevenin), her male model boyfriend, who is annoyed by Marie's pleas for more sex and wishes she would just go to sleep instead of trying to take off his shorts. After one fruitless night, the sex-starved Marie sneaks off to a bar and picks...
...looks like a sweet and frail schoolteacher but willingly accepts a lewd offer from a stranger, fantasizes about working in a headless whore factory, and derives visceral pleasure in gynocological exams. While reminiscent of Luis Bunuel's Belle du Jour, concerning the kinky desires of an angelic Gallic heroine, Breillat's film is less mysterious but considerably more graphic and disturbing...
...Breillat is no stranger to controversy. At age 17, she began by authoring a banned novel and proceeded to make several films exploring sex. She wrote Romance intending to challenge common conventions of feminine desire. The abundant analyzing is obvious--a clear mark of a "woman's" movie. We hear all of Marie's thoughts in voice-overs la Kevin in "The Wonder Years." Of course, the issues at stake are more perverse. "They say a man who screws a woman honors her," we hear after Paul rebuffs her advances. Later, she observes, "Women are the victims men need...
...might construe Marie as a nymphomaniac who needs to do the nasty several different ways to recharge her batteries. Were it not for Marie's voiceovers, the film would appear to be more about different types of sex than different types of love. Yet it's difficult to view Breillat's work as pornographic, because it thinks too much and projects an entertainingly cynical attitude towards the act, In many ways this looks like one of those hazy foreign films with lots of talk and no plot. But provocative fantasies and bitter narration drive out all the mundane, leaving...