Romance

Someone hit the proverbial nail-on-the-head with Romance. A critic wrote that it's like a "bad update of an Antonioni film", and I think that's about as fair a description as one could ask for. It may also depend on how you feel already about Antonioni and his depiction of the precise lack of love or responsiveness of emotional contact in people - or, perhaps, if you've even actually seen an Antonioni movie. While Catherine Breillat probably (and, I would admit, rightfully) considers herself a thoughtful, passionate filmmaker interested in passionless people and in trying to pick apart the thoughts (or anti-thoughts) of a character like Marie, I have to ask after a while, in a film that doesn't have Antonioni-stature direction or compositions: what's the point? We have seen women like this in other movies, in loveless relationships or going out to spread or fulfill their empty wishes or such with others. Such as, yeah, Antonioni, but others too.

It's frustrating to watch, to say the least, but I wasn't ready at first to hold that against the movie. I wanted to see what it had to say, to see how Breillat would show people just having realistic sex, explicit in depiction (naturally, and believe you me its real sex) and talking like couples (or not-couples) do in such situations. I tried to stick with Marie's self-analyzing, her self-aggrandizing thoughts expressed in the first-person narration. In an odd way Caroline Ducey gives a good performance, or better than I remember at the time watching it, since she is good enough to not really need the narration to fill in the audience. Her face, her lack of expression, her inverted and bored and, perhaps, deep down f***ing scared self, show enough. The telling becomes overkill, even from a psychological stand-point.

Some may not agree with this, and that's fine. Some may watch Romance and just love that it shows real people having problems and having such problems during real sex. For the first half I could stick with the movie even as it had its pretensions because I wanted to see where it headed with Marie's infidelity (with the unnecessary lie about being married). It's when the other guy at the school Marie teaches at, and takes her in and turns things up on the sado-masochist meter that I started to waver on it... and, odder still, got bored. It didn't interest me seeing how perverted this guy could get, or how accepting Marie was of it or how it was shot or scored or edited. I admired that it attempted at depicting such a torrid sexual situation so seriously, but it ultimately just didn't do it for me - not on the kind of level the old-school hardcore-serious-erotic films did (i.e. Last Tango in Paris).

Romance is intelligent, and it does have something to say about women and loveless relationships. But was I moved by any of it or intellectually engaged after a certain point? No. It's a movie in a limbo where it wants to have something important to convey through art no matter what the cost, but the points aren't as interesting as its filmmaker thinks or terribly original. And if you just want to watch it for the sex, you're in for a not-too-good surprise. 5.5/10

Though I have a comprehensive review below I wanted to add that some comments here are from people who saw a severely edited version of the film (the sex scenes removed or cropped off). This would be similar to removing the battle scenes from Star Wars.

Same as the likewise French exploitationer "Baise-moi", which was released almost at the same time as this movie, there are some scenes of hardcore pornography added. But as "Baise-moi" only concentrates on surface visuals the message of "Romance" is to explain the emotional conflict of love and sexuality between men and women - told from a female point of view.

A strange film at all, but also very fascinating and interesting executed - as long as you can put up its long dialogue-sequences, the sometimes metaphoric style and the fact that "Romance" is quite difficult to watch... Not the kind of stuff you´re normally used to enjoy as pure entertainment, because you´ll need time and nerves to sit this through..!

8/10

First and foremost, there has been some comment regarding the final explicit scene regarding oral sex whereas the man's penis is shown to be in the woman's hand not in her mouth. This is a framing device that matches a scene at the beginning of the film whereas we quite clearly and unquestionably see the penis in her mouth (the first so-called "shocker" of the film). Since we can guess that both scenes were shot at the same time we can easily deduce that there was no attempt to fool the audience, what the director wanted us to see is quite literally what we see, and what the actors and director chose to show us. We have determined from the first scene that neither the actor nor the actress mind performing this scene in front of the camera (be mindful, even though her mouth is on the man's penis, there is no actual sex). Quite clearly the FINAL scene was NOT an oral sex scene but merely an erotic stroking of her chin upon the man's penis (a common technique in sensual massage, which tells us that those commenting have had much less experience during their lives than the actors did while filming this movie!). This is an important detail however because it tells us much which happens between these two scenes...and literally the moral of the story. At the beginning of the film we meet Marie, she wants sex, lusts for it, and her mate is unable to match her desire. Her mate seems quite satisfied with the sensual contact, but for one reason or another (never quite clear) sex is something that is not on his agenda. The shock of the audience seeing her pull his penis out and provide oral massage is merely because we have not seen this type of explicit scene in mainstream cinema. In comparison to other scenes in the film it is really quite nothing, and a similar scene at the end would have proven anticlimactic. She spends the rest of the film searching to quench her sexual desires, yet sensuality is something that is not on HER agenda. So she has meaningless sex considering herself just a "hole" until by the end of the film she has experienced all that she is going to experience for a while, returns to her mate, and meets him on his terms, for a night of sensual pleasure...namely the final scene as described above (with penis seen in her hand--yes you were suppose to see it there!)

Do we need to see all the graphic sex scenes that appear throughout the film...including the actors literally having sex (loose definition here...more correctly, penetration)? Maybe the point here is like what Lenny Bruce said about racist and swear words...the more they are used, the less meaning they have. Sex has nothing to do with love and is often violent. I've always thought it strange that in cinema a man can put his mouth on a woman's nipple, but a woman cannot put her mouth on a man's penis. Given the nature and frankness of films during the past thirty years this does not seem such a big deal. I would think if the actors were prepared to do nude love scenes this would not be that much of a stretch. Also, I should make it quite clear this is not a porn film. While the actors are going through the motions there is no indication that any male actor ejaculates into any actress (mouth or otherwise). One of the men Marie meets on her journey is in real life a porn star. He is quite good as an actor and I would not have known he was a porn star based on this film. One of the reasons he was used apparently was because he could hold an erection during a particular scene where Marie helps him put on a condom. Given all the efforts over the past decade to educate about safe sex it is curious this type of scene has not been more popular in other films. It certainly would be an acceptable excuse for directors wishing to add a little sizzle to their film. In this particular case the scene is quite straight forward (no pun intended). Naked man sitting in bed next to naked woman, puts on a condom. They talk a little about condoms and she helps him to smooth out the latex with her hand in a way that is not sensual or lewd, but obviously caring. It is a very nice scene and works quite well. By this time we are not shocked at a woman touching a man's penis (let alone with latex separating skin from skin). Yes, you will see penetrating going on but not much sex. The version I rented had a split second scene of an extra pleasuring himself onto what appeared to be another person and that's about it. There is a scene after the condom scene where the two actors seem to be doing it...but we don't see anything, so I doubt they would go through all that trouble and not show it. Even if they had, it would merely be penetration. Perhaps another reason to hire a porn star is that he could control himself during penetration...and if the actress playing Marie could not, what partner would mind? The question I had was how the actor playing Marie's mate was able NOT to get excited. The actress looking quite lovely in the nude, it would be difficult for most men to control themselves laying so close to her in bed, let alone being pleasured by her (I wish there were out-takes of this film, I'm sure a lot more happened then what was shown on screen). There are some disturbing scenes of violent and experimental sex that make this unsuitable for children, but I would suggest the condom scene be used in sex education classes in high school. Hopefully this will open the door for other films to show sex in healthy and realistic ways.

(this is a repost... the other review I posted was somehow missing a part)

In a perfect world, my opinion of ?Romance? would sound more or less like this. This is a fairly interesting film about the crisis in a couple relation that, in some sense, manages to come up with some interesting and quite universal statements about the couple relation qua relation and qua adaptation to a life of routine after the initial sparks. The desire of the woman to test her sexual boundaries should be seen, I believe, in this context, together with the final realization that, after all, even a bondage experience can be as banal and squalid as everyday life. The film is quite typically French: more spoken than physical, with the kind of conversation that French films seem to favor: too intellectual to be spoken by real people in real life, but grounded enough to make you wish that you and your friends could speak like that. It is probably not as good as ?la pianiste? but, then again, not many films are as good as ?la pianiste.? It is, however, an interesting analysis of a situation common to many couples.

This, as I said, in a perfect world. Alas, this is not a perfect world and, somehow, the question of the sexual content of the film managed to dominate the question about its contents. Most of this, I must say, comes from the barbaric and puritan America, my country of adoption. To the more relaxed Europeans, I must point out that this is a country in which, on television, it is normal to see ?reality shows? with murder scenes, car crashes during high speed pursuits, and violent arrests; it is normal to see in prime time films with violent content that glorify the army and the ethos of war. Yet, it is illegal to show a woman?s breast, and curse words that in more liberal countries are considered quite normal are invariably, and audibly, beeped. The sense and the moral choice behind all this escape me, but this is the background that one should have in mind to understand the outrage of some Americans in front of this film.

Outrage which, I must say, is quite misplaced. With the exception of one or two scenes, the sex in the film is not very explicit and, even including the more ?racy? fellatio scenes, it is no more explicit that in Bellocchio?s ?Il Diavolo in Corpo,? which I saw (uncut) on Italian TV (quite late at night, to be honest).

This outrage, however, and the puritanism that generated it, give this film its true significance, beyond the plot and the acting: the reversal of the traditional Hollywoodian standard. The essential fact about this film is that, while sex is depicted with immaculate candor (without, I must add, the lewd and voyeuristic aspects of Hollywood?s depiction), violence is symbolic, hidden from view. The only violent death of the film is in an explosion that we only see from afar in a very sanitized version, the dead body is never shown, and the Fellinesque funeral points to the unreality and the absurdity of the whole occurrence.

If a political message should be derived from this film, is a rejection of a culture that is trying to make sex unacceptable channeling sexual energies into violence, which is so often and so absurdly glorified and depicted into every gory detail. The call for sex versus violence implicit in the editing and the direction of this film is, I will add, a very healthy one.

Not a great film, but a fairly good one. Recommended.