Romance

Sex. Masturbation. Murder. Bondage. Childbirth. Rape. Sodomy. Fellatio. Non-simulated penetration. Romance, it seems, is all of these. Taking In The Realm Of The Senses as an inspiration, director Catherine Breillat has produced a controversial tale pushing the bounds of acceptability.

Marie, a teacher, is frustrated by her boyfriend. After three months together, they still haven't had sex. This isn't because Paul is impotent, but simply that he doesn't want to. Instead he prefers to eat, talk, drink and dance. Marie is torn between her emotional love of Paul and her physical craving for sexual fulfilment.

One night, in a bar, she meets Paolo and has sex with him. This continues until she starts growing fond of him, at which point she dumps him. After this she meets Robert, her headteacher, who turns out to be a bit of a Don Juan. He introduces her to some of his domination fantasies to which she accedes. A strange relationship develops between them mainly based on good food and kinky sex. Then Paul, realising that Marie is drifting from him, invites her to have sex with him. Despite the act never being completed, Marie becomes miraculously pregnant and her life takes another turn.

Romance in French means something different from the English version. It signifies a fleeting dalliance, a short affair of the heart. This film plays on the divorce between the abject self and the sublime self, the difference between love and sex. Marie's boyfriend won't provide her with the latter so she seeks it somewhere else. This idea of the two separate parts is vividly visualised in a fantasy sequence featuring a brothel where clients only see the bodies of the girls, their heads on the other side of a wall, being tended by their loved ones.

The film seems constructed, each object representing something, from the books Paul reads to the colours - alchemists colours - of red, black, and gold. The central performance by Caroline Ducey is a brave one, and it's difficult to see this film being made by a male director. At times I feel sorry for the actress for the kind of ordeals she is forced to endure. I suspect that Romance has a more subtle message that I'm missing, but it's too hidden behind the layers of symbolism.