Romance (1999) [Re-UP]

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: July 22, 2015

Romance (1999)
A Film by Catherine Breillat
DVD5 Custom | VIDEO_TS | PAL 16:9 | Cover + DVD Scan | 01:34:35 | 4,35 Gb
Audio: French AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps | Subtitles: English (added), German
Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Catherine Breillat
Stars: Caroline Ducey, Sagamore Stévenin, François Berléand

Marie (Caroline Ducey), a grade-school teacher whose cold-fish male model boyfriend, Paul (Sagamore Stevenin), won’t have sex with her. She repeatedly tries to arouse and engage him, and the more she does, the more he pulls away. She’s a self-loathing glutton for emotional abuse, and he gets his greatest pleasure, seemingly, in denying her. He insists upon keeping her around and she insists on staying, which makes it a pretty sad arrangement all the way around. Ducey and SteveninEventually, because she isn’t getting quite enough degradation at Paul’s hands, she seeks sexual fulfillment elsewhere…

IMDB | Wikipedia

Before I comment on this film two introductory remarks are necessary. (1) I recommend anyone who is aware of the way in which it was panned by the critics ("puerile self conscious euro-trash", etc) to forget these reviews. I believe it is an unusually rewarding work to see. (2) The title is very misleading, just reading it one cannot be aware of the irony with which it must have been chosen, and anyone expecting to see the film equivalent of a Harlequin novel needs to be warned in advance.


The story is of a young women who loves her very unresponsive husband, but finds the dissatisfaction she feels from her rare and unfulfilling copulation with him drives her into a series of increasingly destructive extra-marital relationships. These are very graphically portrayed, although she struggles to keep her marriage intact. To me this is perhaps the most unsatisfying aspect of the film - today I would have expected that such a marriage would have broken up very quickly and the woman involved would have felt free to look for a more fulfilling relationship. However many films and novels are based on the theme of women who accept either indifference or a great deal of both physical and mental abuse from partners that they love, and I must accept that this is an important theme for a film.


Although the story is far from new, it is handled here with unusual sensitivity and understanding. Some of the sex scenes would normally only be seen in a hardcore porn film and this appears to be what has upset most of the critics, but I cannot go along with this as a valid criticism. Why should films exploiting torture, death and destruction be accepted as mainstream, whilst those dealing with the personal relationships so vital to living a fulfilling life become subject to censorship? However it is important to warn anyone considering viewing this film that although it contains a great deal of graphic sexual activity it is never erotic.These scenes (even those between the young woman and her husband with whom she is certainly in love) uniformly show cold mechanical and meaningless relationships which are ultimately self destructive. They concentrate on the emotions of the woman concerned and, since she is largely passive in most of them, and can often only convey the story through her facial expressions, such scenes require both a very fine actress and a very sensitive director in order to succeed. In my opinion this film provides both. It could probably only have been directed by a woman, and one can sense the determination of both the director and the lead actress to draw viewers of both sex into the story so that they are not merely voyeurs, but are forced to consider its relevance both to their own lives and to those of their friends.


Ultimately the ending of a film of this type can make or mar it. Both a happy and a totally tragic ending for what is intended to be a look at the lives of quiet desperation lived by many women would be inappropriate. Instead the director has taken our understanding of her main character further forward by showing us that for many such women their ultimate satisfaction comes from their children rather than from their life partner.


It is a mark of a successful film when graphic images from it keep coming back to mind long afterwards, particularly when these images force one to consider whether there are lessons in it applicable to ones own life. I believe this would be the experience of most of those who see this film Although I would NOT recommended it as either a skin flick or an erotic film for a couple to watch together in the bedroom, I have no hesitation in recommending it strongly to all those who adequately appreciate what they can expect from it.
IMDB Reviewer

Women and sex are a mystery to most men. They have no idea how deep it runs, how deep and strange, how strangely disconnected from romance. Catherine Breillat's film is personal. It devastates male attitudes to fidelity and trust. Marie (Caroline Ducey) is faithful to Paul (Sagamore Stevenin), even though he doesn't want to make love to her. She finds this humiliating and insulting and too painful to bear, as if she is hateful. "You despise me because I'm a woman."


He is cruel in his refusal to analyse his feelings. He takes the attitude, if you don't like it, leave. She stays. To ease her anguish, she tests the boundaries of lust and degradation, becoming addicted to sadomasochistic game-playing and the thrill of a stranger's embrace, discovering, as if she didn't know, that "women are the victims men require".


She is not a victim, rather the willing accomplice in others' fantasies, recognising the power of sex, while avoiding intimacy. "Physical love is triviality clashing with the divine," she tells herself, already lost in the language of metaphysics.

Many will find this an artsy excuse for pornography. It is nothing of the kind. Breillat's honesty is reflected in screenwriter, Severine Siaut's use of first-person narrative - very fashionable in neo-realist French cinema right now - the internal voice illuminating dark thoughts, like a lamp on the cellar stair.


The film's strength is its refusal to take its eye off Marie. No concessions are made. This is her body, her story, her emotions, her pain. Men don't want to be told how little they matter, especially when insisting how much they do, and obscenity is nothing but a reflection on the beholder's mind.
Eye For Film

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